Bounty Hunters of Mandalore: Kuat Special
by Kenneth Whit3
Summary: This story covers the latest exploits of long time partners Kar'tan Venn and Cairn Tracyn as they survive in the vast Star Wars universe.  As bounty hunters, the pair are sent in to investigate, apprehend, or if necessary, eliminate their employer's targets.
1. The Prologue

Kar'tan Venn leaned again to examine the bomb strapped to his chest. It had been inaudibly counting down its 30 minute timer for the past 10 minutes, and he was no closer to escaping since his captors had left the small holding cell. _Relax_, he thought, _I have all the time in the world to contemplate my enlightened existence. Or escape, though that might take longer._

Truthfully, he was rather worried, because in the time he had been studying the device, he had determined that it had a baradium core, which would easily vaporize him and his _beskar_ plating. _It's a rather elegant solution_, Kar'tan thought for likely the third time since discovering himself strapped to the device. _Destroy me, leave nothing behind, but the resulting miniature fusion ball wouldn't even scratch the walls._ He hadn't thought these pirates could finish him off that cleanly.

The clock counted past 19 minutes.

Kar'tan's attention returned to his escape. Although one of them had pilfered his favorite _beskar_-weave duster, the pirate thugs had neglected to search him properly when they hastily tied him up. Even so, the armor's portable arsenal was still basically useless: knives invisibly shoved underneath armor plates, his hold-out blaster, a pouch full of detonators, everything was out of reach of his bound hands.

*shunk*

Everything except his Gauntlet Lances.

*shunk*

Both six-inch vibroknives slid out of his gloves' upper plating and thudded behind him on the seat. Working his shoulders in sequence, he was able to slowly slice through the fiber-cord holding him to the bomb and the chair. As he finished shearing the one cord he could easily reach, the whole rig loosened and fell. The bomb nearly hit the floor, but the bounty hunter managed to catch it with his feet and set it down gently. There was no telling how unstable the device might have been.

_Seven minutes now, no time to lose._

However, Kar'tan rose from the chair only to discover that while he had been secured to it, and the bomb, with fiber-cord, his hands had been bound by durasteel cuffs. _Wonderful,_ he thought, _Still, there's no stopping a Mando on a mission, especially not this one._ He took two quick steps and shoved his armored boot through the insubstantial duraplast door and staggered into the adjoining room.

The cafeteria Kar'tan entered was a mess of blaster-scorched, overturned tables and chairs, a number of food trays, and a lot of spilled Nerf Stew. Seven guards turned to look at him, dumbstruck, as he stepped into the furniture massacre. Their bewilderment was rewarded by several precise shots that quickly dropped the whole unit except the one wearing the _Beskar_-weave duster. Realizing his opportunity for a little revenge, Kar'tan head butted the last guard, bowling the man over, and nearly caved his head in with a number of savage kicks.

Staggering slightly to keep his feet, Kar'tan called across the cafeteria, "You really needed _my_ help against _seven_ guards!"

A voice called back from the door opposite, "He had your duster; I didn't think you would appreciate _another_ blaster hole!"

* * *

><p>Story Notes:<p>

*This story is meant to take place in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. I've read many of the novels available on the market, and I think I have a reasonable grasp of what makes an interesting Star Wars book. That said, I know that some of the depictions in the story may contradict what's come to be established Canon (The depiction of Mandalorians is notable here, in reference to their depiction in _The Clone __Wars_ TV show). This story is essentially told from a nationalist Mandalorian's perspective; thus, it has much in common with Karen Traviss' depiction of the organization (**Mostly the earlier parts of _Republic Commando _and_ Knights of the Old Republic_ 1 and 2).

**Something has come to my attention during my writings. Because of Traviss' work on_ Legacy of the Force_ (a series I freely admit that I did not particularly like) and the latter parts of the _Republic Commando_ series, many fans of Star Wars may not want to read about Mandalorians as her depictions tend to put them in an ultra-positive light, while others (Troy Denning, I'm looking at you...) prefer an ultra-negative light. And to be fair, I've started to really dislike her takes on various characters in other settings.

I admit that I am a fan of the depicted culture, (the level of detail that has been put into the society over the course of several book and game series impresses me most of all) but in my efforts on this story, I intend to portray the main characters as genuine characters, not Marty Stus or members of some ridiculous ideal.

As I work on the story, I've realized that this particular part of Kar'tan and Cairn's journey is told solely from their perspective; thus, there is an inherent bias in what is presented to the reader. My personal views aside, many readers may see the situations as grey versus black, protagonist centered morality, or even straight on into outright villainy. I hope that readers will accept these biased appearances for now, on the grounds that this is my first foray into writing, _and_ that the perspective will widen with coming stories.

But if it's unanimously hated, then I'll just finish quietly and go work on some other project.

*I'm open to all criticisms, points of inaccuracy, and suggestions as I write, so enjoy yourselves! I have fun writing these characters and I hope you have fun reading about them.


	2. The Hometown

4 days earlier

"So explain to me again, why is this necessary?"

Kar'tan Venn slid out from under the partially disassembled A-wing to stare at his partner, Cairn Tracyn, who was casually leaning against the engines, poking at several of the fighter's loose wires. Above him one of the glowpanels flickered erratically. Kar'tan made a mental note to replace it, thought better and smudged a reminder in grease on the side of the fuselage.

"I need this A-wing to fly faster," Kar'tan replied, slightly exasperated.

"Are you serious? Why would you possibly want this death trap to go any faster? It will probably shake itself to pieces." He picked at a flake of paint that was already well on its way to peeling off.

"Do you seriously think I'm going to leave it in the condition it was in when we bought it?"

"I hope not." Cairn said as the piece chipped off between his fingers.

Kar'tan considered throwing a loose hydrospanner at his long-time partner. Instead he opted for logic over brute force.

"Remember the plan. I'm the quick and agile bait, you're the heavily armed trap. That tends to work better when the ship I'm in is actually quick and agile."

"You wouldn't need to be if you came up with better plans than using yourself as a target," Cairn said, "And seriously, how often have we found ourselves in a situation where we need to pull off that kind of stunt anyway?" Kar'tan could hear a bit of smugness creeping into Cairn's argument.

"Really?" he asked, incredulous, "Because I can name several: Moddell, Tharin, Rhen Var, Tharin again, Dantooine, Caridia, and things would definitely have been a lot easier if we'd been able to implement this particular strategy on Bajic."

"Okay, yeah, sure, the job on Bajic would have been easier, but not as fun."

Kar'tan sighed, "Yes, you're right, dodging asteroids was fun, but we're never going to get our hands on that Imperial Privateer's Bounty if you don't start thinking more tactically,"

He paused to fidget with a loose thrust modulator.

"Besides, I thought I explained this before: I'm replacing the A-wing's compression chambers with a pair from a Sienar TIE model," he explained, "It has better structure for compression and if I can combine it with Incom's injector assembly, I should be able to cure the engine's explosive unreliability."

Cairn took a step back as Kar'tan returned to work.

Chewing his lip thoughtfully, he shot back, "Yeah, but that doesn't change the fact that you have no idea whether or not this will work!"

Kar'tan was keen to defend his position, "I've done the calculations! There's nothing wrong with what I'm doing, it should be safer than a stock pair of engines... in theory."

Cairn gave him a reproachful look, to which Kar'tan responded without getting out from under the A-wing. "We did the same basic thing to the ARC, you know, and you were absolutely thrilled with the results of that modification."

"Hardly," Cairn shot back, as he began wandering around the hangar. He cleared a space on top of a weapons crate and sat down. "The ARC was a completely dependable vehicle with dozens of missions under it's belt, and we performed a tried-and-true modification that made it a much more capable craft. What you're doing here is hot-rodding an absolute piece of junk based on a stranger's suggestion on how to get more speed! Everything on the ARC was compatible with existing hardware. How many parts have you had to modify already? Not to mention that the craft itself is completely different structurally." He paused for a moment, "I mean, how many times have you actually taken this thing out anyway? Once, Twice?"

"Three times."

Unfortunately, Cairn had him on this detail. As much as Kar'tan loved it, and as much as they needed it for his pirate-baiting plans, this A-wing was in sad shape.

Still, even in the midst of a well conceded point, Kar'tan wasn't about to stop bickering now, they were on a roll.

"That's why I'm installing the Sienars, they'll be much safer at the speeds I intend to run the engines at."

"Says you," returned Cairn, "Besides, if you go up and smear yourself on an asteroid, I'll have to hit our next mark all on my own."

Kar'tan stopped working, forgetting his modifications for a moment. "You found another one already?"

"It's fresh from Keldabe; Imperial again." Cairn pulled a datapad from his pocket; the contract datacard he had taken from the bounty office was still sticking out of it. "There's a lot of jargon in here, hold on." Cairn stopped for a moment, and as he extricated himself from underneath the A-wing, Kar'tan wondered how his friend could get anything out of the Imperial legalese. Any time he looked at a contract for more than signing all he got out of it was a large headache. "Basically, there's a civilian thief wanted on Kuat for raiding a major Imperial ground armory. Fellow by the name of 'Opus Crane;' apparently, he made off with quite a lot of kit."

Kar'tan wiped his hands on a shop rag and erased the grease reminder off the A-wing's side. "Looks like you're going to have to wait a bit longer." he said to himself. Working on the various space and planetcraft filling the galaxy was a rewarding, if simple, existence, one that would easily put food on the table. If he was a less adventurous man, Kar'tan would have been content to stay in the shop his whole life, but adventure had its benefits. "Let me hit the refresher and then we'll get going," Kar'tan said as he walked towards the front of the hangar.

Inside the spartan accommodations of the shop's lavatory, he pondered the bounty's information and cleaned himself off. The oil, dirt, and grease from the rusty A-wing sloughed off easily under the soapy water; Kar'tan had been working all morning, and it felt good to get out of the sweaty work clothes and back into the bodysuit he wore under his armor.

"That's the fourth one in as many months," said Cairn from the opposite side of the door. "Commenor, Duros, Correllia, and now Kuat. Either the mess at Endor hit them harder than I thought, or their security in that region is slacking."

"I've been wondering about Endor," responded Kar'tan, "Imperial Propaganda has been considerably quiet about the whole affair."

"Now that you mention it, the Emperor hasn't made any official statements since then either," said Cairn, pausing thoughtfully. "Eh," he sighed, "It doesn't matter."

Kar'tan nodded in tacit agreement as he exited in fresh clothes.

Without further discourse, the pair of bounty hunters entered the workshop's armory. On the far wall, their colored_ Beskar_ armors stood waiting, almost like a pair of strill pups eager to get on the hunt. To either side of the suits their stockpile of weapons were laid out on low shelves.

Looking at the other, more violent half of his life, displayed in front of him like a scrapbook, Kar'tan reflected that his identity extended to the unique armor he wore. Like all Mandalorian armor sets, it was not designed in a manufacturing plant to fit unfathomable quotas, but in a smithy to the needs and desires of each wearer.

The _Beskar_ plates, the part most remembered by outsiders, were colored to reflect the wearer's personality, life goals, or general taste. Kar'tan's own blue primary reflected his intense loyalty to his clan. He often supposed that to most foreigners Cairn's black armor was meant to intimidate, but in Mandalorian society it spoke of his intense thirst for justice. The fact that it scared the _osik_ out of his prey was simply an added bonus. Even more, because of their established theme as team mates, the pair was colored as a matching set - Kar'tan had black secondary, Cairn had blue - so that even outsiders could tell that they worked as a team.

On top of basics like color, many Mandalorians decorated their armor with trophies for memorable events, recovered plates to remember loved ones, or small sigils for their clan. Some even customized the armor to reflect lessons that they had learned about where it can break, where to keep extra detonators, or where to keep knives for rare occasions when their hands were bound.

In particular, Kar'tan's helmet was noticeable in a crowd because he had elected to reinforce it with a thicker skullcap and cheek plates after a rather nasty run in with a wookiee that left him unconscious for nearly a day, an event Cairn would likely never let him live down.

Arrayed on the wall behind the disassembled plating were the accouterments that added further personality to the otherwise cold exterior of a Mandalorian's armor. Cairn wore a simple _kama_ rig that his father had recovered from the clone wars. Next to that hung the cloak he used for urban and cold weather operations.

Kar'tan, in a moment of what he considered good fashion sense, had long ago added a leather duster to his ensemble after he saw a fugitive in a longcoat fleeing a hunting party on Dxun. The flailing cloak had made it hard for the group's marksmen to get a bead on their target's weak points and had even dissipated some of the lethal energy.

As a birthday gift, his father had improved on the idea, giving the coat a _Beskar_-weave under-layer. The finely woven metal inside the cloak-like jacket made it resistant to any form of energy weapon without ruining its flow.

However, the one absolute constant among all Mandos was the helmet; its T-shaped visor was the unmistakable symbol of _Mando'ade sheb_-kicking.

To a man, the iron warriors were feared on the battlefield; when the armor was entirely assembled, the wearer was nearly invincible, and every Mando worth his clan wore it like a second skin.

A Corsec Officer had once told Kar'tan, under cover and out of armor, that the most effective way to deal with a fully armored Mando was to drop a building on him, and even that was often not feasible nor was it guaranteed to stop the soldier. Kar'tan still wished he'd had his helmet on to record that bombshell, but ever since then, he had pushed himself even harder to live up to that expectation.

While Kar'tan reminisced, the pair finished donning their armor, and though they were on home turf, armed themselves as usual.

From the left shelves, Cairn gathered his fearsome gallery of knives and inserted each one into the various slots on his armor. The last time Kar'tan counted, there were 37, but he was certain that his partner had picked up at least two more since last week. On a separate shelf, Cairn's stock Model 434 stood on its stabilized mount, clean and dry. After the long years they'd spent working together, Kar'tan wondered how much action the blaster had actually seen. The last time he'd pulled it was during an interrogation, and even then, the gun had been disabled.

To the right sat Kar'tan's more varied portable arsenal. He didn't collect weapons like candy, but the habitual accumulation of trophies was a typically Mandalorian trait. Two blasters, an SE-14r pistol and a chopped E-11 Kar'tan had affectionately titled the E-1-1-A, were surrounded by a small set of balanced combat knives. Rather than overload his armor with daggers or pistols, Kar'tan generally preferred to fill his spare pockets with detonators, detonite, and welding jelly. In the past, the distraction provided by a ball of flame or a shower of sparks had been invaluable for a last-minute escape, and blocking an exit through destructive ingenuity often made their prey that much easier to capture.

Their armory was steadily growing, and other shelves contained various armaments that had come in handy throughout the years. Each one had a story or a special purpose: Verpine Shatter Guns and Rifles, a venerable DC-15 blaster rifle, a PLX missile launcher, several concussion rifles, an E-Web, and a DXR-6 Disruptor Rifle, to name a few. Most of these weapons were too difficult to carry from job to job, but the bounty hunters still practiced with them often. Common sense and experience had taught them to keep every skill sharp, just in case.

Kar'tan left his backup Shatter Pistol on the shelf. The likelihood that he would need a projectile weapon was slim to none, as most investigative bounty work didn't require so much stealth. _Maybe the next time we do proper mercenary work,_ he thought.

Now fully loaded, the pair left the workshop for their pre-mission supply run through the local market. The town they had grown up in was small, like most Mandalorian settlements, and the refurbished hangar they used as a home and workshop was only a stone's thrown away from anything they needed, especially the pub.

In nearly any place but Coruscant, and perhaps Nar Shaddaa, their armor would have attracted nervous glances and stuck out like a pair of broken thumbs, but not on Mandalore. Here, the market was an absolute riot of color; a sea of brightly hued armor sets shining in the noonday sun denoted visitors from clans all over the region. The two bounty hunters merged with the ocean of bobbing helmets; they were just another team stocking up on supplies.

The market vendors at midday were still well stocked and equipped with the standard, semi-pleasant demeanor befitting all merchants at this end of the galaxy. The market here served as a trading post for a large portion of this continent's countryside, which meant that the selection was pleasantly varied: a patient buyer could find tools for nearly any task performed on or off Mandalore.

The journey through the aisles often made Kar'tan feel like a bit of a tourist as he watched visitors from other clans examine tools and foodstuffs for quality, but the locals always made him feel at home with a wave or a Mando handshake. Cairn tended to be more subdued than Kar'tan,, but being on home soil seemed to make him more at ease with those he didn't know personally.

The rows stretched on, and the pair slowly made their way to the most important booth in the line: Rahnin's Blaster Supply. The owner had accrued an enormous selection over the years, and his supply almost never fell below his customer's demand. Kar'tan believed the vendor was the most reliable supplier in the market, but the bounty hunter's locality made him a trifle biased.

Nevertheless, reliability was important to a bounty hunter, without the proper tibanna cartridge a blaster was little more than a sculpture or a club. Riding on several years of experience, the duo always took the time to restock before every "outing" and kept a thick supply of cartridges on hand.

As Kar'tan browsed, Cairn approached with his hands behind his back.

"I got you something," he said, slyly.

Cairn lifted his hands, revealing a holdout blaster for his partner.

"An SSK-7. I've always wanted one of these."

"Think of it as an early birthday present," Cairn said with a grin.

"You can't use a business purchase to get out of buying me a birthday present."

"Just did," replied Cairn, his grin increasing in size.

Kar'tan twirled the small, but powerful and illegal pistol in his hands.

"Regardless, I'm impressed, you seemed to have found this in good nick."

"Yeah," said Cairn, "now you have a replacement for the pistol you claim a Cannock ate."

"I claimed it, because it happened!" Replied Kar'tan, aggravated.

"So you've said, for the hundredth time, I might add."

"You might add," Kar'tan retorted sarcastically, "you're just not sure"

"Oh I'm sure," returned Cairn, "More sure than the time you picked up that chiss fellow. I must say, he looked so wonderful in drag."

Their verbal sparring continued unabated while they finished their supply run. Kar'tan was impressed; Cairn had picked up several interesting new insults from somewhere, and his grasp of Jabiimi racial slurs even surprised a passing Toydarian merchant.

Kar'tan checked off his list: tibanna, throwing knives, rope, Imperial data readers, various detonators, and food. Unfortunately, there never seemed to be enough room in the ARC for everything they needed on a job, thus the only food they bought was for the hyperspace flight to Kuat; the rest would have to be purchased on site, a task that Kar'tan, a foreign food enthusiast, looked forward to with a particular zeal.

Their hangar loomed in the distance. The building itself was rather large for a home, by Mandalorian standards, but it housed their part time workshop and all the vehicles that the boys had "acquired" over the years: The A-wing, a SoroSuub X-34, several air speeders, two Canderous Tanks, and their pride and joy, an InCom Aggressive ReConnaissance - 170 fighter/bomber from the Clone Wars that they had affectionately titled the ARC.

While most of the other craft produced during the Clone Wars had been stolen or donated to museums, their ARC was purchased at the beginning of their joint career and nearly every spare credit had been put into making it the perfect bounty hunter's tool.

Prisoners, or "bounties," sat in the center seat; its control panel had been removed and its hatches and cabin were reinforced to prevent escape. The gun controls had been rerouted to the pilot's seat, mimicking what Incom would later do with the T-65 X-wing.

While an ARC fighter normally carried a bank of 6 proton torpedoes to compliment its heavy guns, Kar'tan had pulled the expensive missile launcher and replaced it with ventral mass cannons. This upset the balance slightly towards the rear, but the weight fluctuation in the lower frame allowed for the extra set of Sienar weapons that Cairn had demanded be attached to the upper fuselage. The new L-s7.2 cannons, with their faster cycling rates, caused roughly the same amount of damage, but were better designed for hitting a fleeing craft nimble enough to avoid the ARC's large wing guns.

In comparison to the frail, but nimble TIE fighters, the ARC was a slow, lumbering powerhouse, but Incom's robust design policies meant that after a few engine modifications, the customized craft could move nearly as quickly as a stock model.

The one thing the ARC still lacked was a decent sensor package. The Clone Wars Era reconnaissance module had served them well, but Kar'tan knew that it would need to be upgraded soon.

The duo climbed in for launch, and Cairn took the helm while Kar'tan manned the aft cannon. After all of their pre-flight checks, the snubfighter lifted smoothly away from the hangar's retractable roof.

Kar'tan's position at the tail gun gave him a spectacular view as late afternoon Mandalore dropped away. High in the sky they were bathed in midday light as space enveloped them. Far to the north, a storm was ravaging the small town of Enceri; the dark clouds appeared to be heading towards their home, but the businesses below carried on without any concern for the oncoming storm.

"What did you say?" Cairn radioed to him. Kar'tan shook himself out of his reverie. He hadn't realized he had spoken.

"I don't know, what did I say?" Kar'tan said, trying to remember himself.

"Something about, 'aren't you telling me,' or something. What was that about?"

He shrugged. "Who knows, just something that sprang to mind. You know, like when we're talking to a client that we know isn't telling us everything."

Kar'tan gave the planet a last look before they lurched into hyperspace. The storm was mostly forgotten as he began planning how they were going to pursue their bounty.

"Opus Crane," he said with a laugh. "Sounds like some ugly bird."


	3. The Arrival

The Next Day

The Kuati Driveyards were enormous. The whole complex was an expansive ring that stretched around the entire planet. At peak capacity, the dry docks could churn out the tonnage equivalent of seven Imperial Star Destroyers a day. To make the space even more crowded, the dreadnought-abundant 18th Imperial StarFleet was permanently stationed in orbit around the planet to provide oversight for construction and testing operations. New captains often called the station "The Dressing Room" because many of them were stationed here for long periods while their ships were built and tested, so as to better acquaint the officers with the Star Destroyer's myriad functions and firepower levels. Despite this, the largest collection of metal in the galaxy actually orbited Ord Mantell, and that was a scrap heap. Literally.

A lonely ARC fighter slid into real-space at the planet's L5 Lagrange point, a place favored for hyperspace exits because of it's relatively neutral gravity.

Kar'tan radioed from the rear berth. "You awake?"

"No," Cairn sent back, "I just pulled us out of hyperspace in my sleep!" Kar'tan shook his head. Hyperspace always made his partner irritable.

"In that case, wake up already," said Kar'tan. "Because I've come up with a plan. It took me the whole flight, but I managed to stagger through the Imperial Retr-"

"Let me guess, your plan involves consulting any witnesses, checking with the thief's friends and family, asking a local hutt if there's been any recent underworld activity, and blowing up two buildings to get our target's attention, right?"

"Well, just one building, and you know there aren't any hutts on Kuat," replied Kar'tan, "At least, not since our last visit here."

"You mean 'because of,'" Cairn said as he brought up approach vectors on the cockpit's HUD.

"Same difference," Kar'tan countered "I also hope you remember that the nobility here don't take kindly to men like us. We'll need to be discreet, for once. At least, until we blow up the building."

"I can be discreet," snapped Cairn. "It's the armor that misses the subtleties."

The snubfighter curved down and began its final approach to Ground Port #17. As the controller guided them in, Kar'tan used the panoramic view to note that this seemed to be one of the poorer regions of the planet, something that would serve to conceal the duo a little better. The noble classes tended to wear impractical outfits that made Beskar stand out even more.

"So how exactly is your plan any different from a normal investigation?" Cairn asked as the ARC touched down. "It's not really much of a plan. Sounds like police work to me."

"Oh yes, because demolishing buildings is standard police procedure." Kar'tan retorted sarcastically.

Cairn shrugged. "You make these promises, but I'll wager fifty credits that we don't actually get to blow up any buildings."

Their landing berth was a fair condition, and as the bounty hunters performed their final post-flight checks, a port official strutted across the bay towards the newest arrivals. He was dressed in a normal Kuati dockworker fashion, but his gait and demeanor suggested he was one of two things. Either he was upper class and his rich father had suggested that he work a poor man's job so as to get some appreciation for his billions, or he was a snot of a day laborer who thought he could squeeze his position for every ounce of self importance he could hope to find in it. Kar'tan sincerely hoped that it was the former, because during the experience some of those kids actually gained an ounce of respectability, the latter group inevitably put Cairn in an exceptionally foul mood. Kar'tan could already tell by the cant to Cairn's helmet that he was working on the same puzzle.

Kar'tan silently chinned his com as he stepped out to meet the official.

"Discreet, remember."

Kar'tan made a mental note of this man. Small, red hair, a crooked nose, and a permanent grimace. It didn't change as the two Mandalorians exited the craft. He was either used brutes like Kar'tan staring him down, or he was just that arrogant. Either way he had to be watched closely. The man might see what he thought was an opportunity to advance himself, which could lead to trouble for the bounty hunters.

Cairn turned his back on the man. By his body movements, Kar'tan could tell he was taking his time to inspect the ARC for micrometeorite damage. While his HUD had been specially calibrated for this sort of close inspection, the route he took around the snubfighter allowed him to get a fairly detailed layout of the bay, discreetly.

"G'day," said Kar'tan, laying his already thick accent on as heavily as possible.

"Good... afternoon," said the official, his voice dripping with disdain, "I'll need to see your starship registry, flight plan, a... reason for choosing this port, and two hundred and fifty credits in docking fees."

Kar'tan was glad his visor hid his eye-roll, and Cairn, in obvious exasperation, banged his helmet on the ARC's lower wing, a move that Kar'tan hoped the official would take as a case of space legs. Already the job was turning sour.

There was no docking fee, Cairn had asked, he was very particular about finances. The demand immediately proved that this chakaar was one of the latter group of strutting dock workers. Had Cairn been dealing with the man he just would have gotten angry, but Kar'tan loved giving idiots like this the runaround, it was just too easy.

"Sure thing," Kar'tan said cheerily, "Let me just find that Imperial Financial Report." he sighed lightly as he began patting his pockets, "You know, I like working for Imperials; they don't tend to care where we go or how we get our job done, but they track every single cred we spend, and then there's all the reports. It's funny, they're so concerned with financial paperwork, they don't even care if we end up with collateral damages, so long as it doesn't cost them anything..."

He paused, "Now, I want to make sure I spell your name correctly for the expense report. It was...?"

The man's face contorted in horror as he realized that while Kar'tan could just kill him offhandedly, the empire had agents trained specifically to make him suffer for fraudulent charges.

"I...I think we can just waive that fee just this once," he said. "No use taking up your obviously important time with extra book keeping. Th-thank you sir, e-enj-joy your stay!" He stammered before scurrying off to check his nerves, and his retirement plan.

Cairn approached and jutted his chin at the fleeing dockworker, "What a load of _osik_. Trying to extort us when we're on Imperial business."

"In his defense," Kar'tan replied, "We're not exactly landing in the Emperor's shuttle. Is the ARC secure?"

Cairn nodded. "Let's go, your majesty," he said with a chuckle.

XXX

"Sir, the Investigators have arrived in system as expected."

"Send Neero to follow them when they land."

"Just Neero, Sir? No one else?"

"He must prove himself, as you have done Mr. Crane."

"Yes, Overseer."

XXX

As the pair forged a path from the spaceport to the stormtrooper barracks, Cairn used the silence to scan the downtown markets for places their quarry might be more likely to frequent. He didn't really expect to find the man they were looking for lurking about, but criminals had a bad tendency to do dumb things. The crowd usually gave him clues when he scanned: People who watched them too closely, ducked away as they approached, or tried to keep their faces covered from the Mandos' view were usually individuals worth taking a deeper look into. This group had likely never seen a Mandalorian before, because nearly everyone they encountered was staring, but it didn't mean there wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

"Kar'tan, 8 o'clock. Possible target. Red and gray. Rodian. Definitely watching us," said Cairn. Before Kar'tan could respond, the Rodian ducked into a nearby alley.

"I don't see anything," he said.

"Target disappeared. In there," Cairn pointed further down the street as he approached a closer alley, his pace quickening.

"Pursue, but be discreet," said Kar'tan, "Take your time." He leaned against the wall at the opening of the byway as if he were taking in the sights. "I've got your back."

Sprinting through the deserted passageway, Cairn dashed past the various back doors and trash receptacles. If he was fast enough, he could reacquire a visual when he hit the next street, but the dark alley opened up to reveal more crowds. Scanning left and right, he stopped to watch the mass of shoppers for a few seconds. Traffic was lazy and constant both up and down the street, but straight out from the Rodian's alley the flow was disturbed and agitated, as if someone had recently run through it. Directly in line with the commotion was a cantina.

"Get over here," Cairn spoke into his com. "He's off the street."

The "KDY not?" looked fairly standard for a spaceport pub: a double-swing door, a single, blurred transparisteel window. Despite the ambient temperature, Cairn's helmet systems indicated that there were approximately 15 heat signatures inside; it was a rough figure, but Cairn assumed the worst. _Over a dozen, and every one could be armed to the teeth,_ he thought, _Entertaining odds..._

Kar'tan settled next to him at the mouth of the alley and appeared to take an intense interest in a fruit stand. Cairn, confident in his partner's covering position, angled out into the crowd so that he could cross the street without anyone in the building seeing him. Once across, he made his way back up the open air market towards the cantina. The door had been propped open to let as much breeze through with the least amount of dust. He stopped just outside to let his helmet's wraparound eye sensor scan the interior of the cantina while he pretended to examine the sign hanging above the avenue. The Rodian was there, and he was with friends: two zabrak and a burly human were staring right at Cairn through the opening, most likely waiting for him to enter.

"Discreet, remember," Though it was small, the speaker in Cairn's helmet lost little of that chastising quality in Kar'tan's voice.

Not wanting to back down from a potential fight, but not wanting to start a ruckus before receiving orders from the Imperials, Cairn turned away and kicked a nearby lamp post in frustration as he made his way back to Kar'tan.

Luckily, the helmet communicators allowed him to be silent to outsiders, "The damned Rodian had friends. They looked like they expected someone to come in after them."

"Interesting. They probably think you lost him since no one barged in," Kar'tan returned, not looking up from the stand he'd settled at. He paused with an air of thoughtfulness, and Cairn wondered if his partner simply had his mind on lunch.

"This seems too noteworthy to be coincidental," Cairn interjected.

"You're right, we should check them out after our briefing." Kar'tan resumed walking towards their destination, "Let's get back on it."

The crowd in the streets had finally begun to settle. Cairn resisted the temptation to look back over his shoulder.

XXX

The Stormtrooper Barracks that contained the bounty hunters' current employer dominated the soft, green landscape surrounding it. The Base was easily the largest building on the rolling fields for kilometers around, and like all Imperial structures, it was oppressively gray. Worse, its location on a slight hill, compounded with the long distance from the spaceport town made it appear all the more imposing to an approaching visitor. It conjured images of a tombstone planted at the head of a grave.

Gravel crunching underfoot, the bounty hunter pair made their way past the outer security checkpoint with little more than a cursory check of their contract datacard. Cairn seemed pleased at the faster pace, but, under the circumstances, it only served to make Kar'tan uneasy, as their quick access contradicted the Imperials' absolute reliance on double and triple checking information. Even if they had had an escort they should have been stopped several times.

More gravel accompanied them to the second checkpoint. The men stationed here appeared more alert, and their security proved to be at a higher standard when a small contingent of Stormtroopers surrounded the duo.

Kar'tan was slightly comforted by the sight of white armor around them._ At least some protocols are still being followed,_ he thought,_ but if this is what their security is like,then either the rebellion is hitting them harder than we thought, or there's something else going on here._

After a quick exchange verifying that the Mandalorians were approved to be there the Stormtroopers formed into an escort and guided the bounty hunters into the Main Office, where Base Administrator waited. The lean, officious looking man with a shining scalp and a rather large, pointed nose stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his arms pushing his narrow torso forwards. The stance, combined the stood of old age, gave him the appearance of a vulture, waiting for its meal to collapse to the floor, but rather than as a keen predator, or even a patient scavenger, the man seemed to regard them in the same way one regards the morning flimsi: preoccupied disinterest.

Beside his desk, the base's chief security officer stood attentively. This man was somewhat more nondescript, easy to lose in a crowd if not for the uniform, but he stood with the same demeanor as any seasoned Imperial Officer.

Once the bounty hunters had reached the administrator's desk, the troopers escorting them arrayed themselves at the rear wall, a space normally out of sight and, intentionally, out of mind.

"You are the investigators?" the Administrator asked "Pity, I thought for once I wouldn't be dealing with more helmets," he sighed as if exhausted, "Regardless, I am Colonel Horatio Karjeel of the 555th Imperial Stormtrooper Corps, overseer and primary administrator of Kuati Ground Operations, planet-wide."

"Kar'tan Venn and Cairn Tracyn," responded Kar'tan, "Private Investigators, at your service."

The duo saluted in unison, and the Colonel looked moderately impressed, but still spiritless. "At ease, gentlemen," he said wearily.

Kar'tan considered the base commander's drooping countenance with a mild sadness. To him, The Colonel's attitude was completely understandable; Kuat had always been known as an Imperial loyal planet, and this base was practically a formality. The man had the stance and subtle demeanor of a battlefield commander, and to a old Bha'lir like Karjeel, "Kuati Ground Operations" had to be maddeningly tedious.

"You have our respect sir, and we'll kindly stay out of your way. We're just here to find the _chakaar_ that stole all of your guns."

"Good," replied Karjeel, "He has evaded the local authorities for nearly a week now. They say they will catch the thief, though I do not place much faith in them. The local officers are... inadequate at best."

"Put your mind at rest, sir," Kar'tan replied in an increasingly formal tone, "No one escapes us."

"Excellent," The Colonel replied, eyes brightening a bit, "I'll see that you have access to all the security footage available, as well as the rosters for all personnel on base. Please communicate with my security chief, Lieutenant Aveus Bonari, if you need any further details. He knows the barracks inside and out."

"Thank you, sir," Kar'tan said.

"I'm curious," Cairn interrupted. "Why haven't you taken a couple of your own squads and tracked the man down? There must be more qualified troopers available here."

"I don't move my men without clear orders or purpose," said Karjeel, with an air of finality, "Good day, gentlemen."

Kar'tan and Cairn, unsure how to withdraw from an employer they had not shaken hands with, gave half salutes and followed Lieutenant Bonari to the nearby security office.

XXX

As usual, interviewing potential suspects was a slow process. The roster could give Kar'tan a sense of Crane's accomplices or confidants, but it was vague at best. At the very least, his analysis suggested that the Troopers probably didn't know much about the theft; most civilian workers were kept away from the soldiers at large, and Crane wasn't one of the few that worked with them.

Overall, the civilian staff cooperated with his investigation; most remembered the closing years of the Old Republic, when legitimate jobs were absurdly scarce, and they were willing to do anything they could to maintain a steady income, and the Empire had a reputation for doing far worse than simply firing an uncooperative employee.

Despite this, not many of the workers could tell him much. There were hints here and there, some minor suggestions of tension between the workers, and maybe a small smuggling ring among the Troopers, but nothing stood out as necessary to the investigation. With his potential leads running thin, the last few suspects had to reveal something or he would have just wasted over 4 hours on this dead end.

However, it seemed that luck was on his side, as the last man on the roster had all the qualifiers he was looking for: He often worked with Crane, his off-base residence was near Crane's, and Kar'tan's pre-interview consultation with Lieutenant Bonari revealed that the man often ate lunch with the thief.

The last appointment sidled into the interrogation room and sat nervously at the small table. Kar'tan waited a moment to let the potential suspect simmer in his seat before entering. Given the man's rather anxious demeanor, Kar'tan hoped to soften him up just a bit more. As he waited for an opportune moment, it became obvious that the civilian was clearly out of his element; Kar'tan suspected that most of the workers had never seen the inside of the security office, much less the interrogation chamber.

_That's enough,_ thought Kar'tan, as he opened the door into the single glowpanel room. The worker stiffened in shock at the break in the silence he had barely become accustomed to. Kar'tan's armored boots thumped against the floor like a Drexl bashing through a heavy bulkhead, further intimidating the worker as Kar'tan took his seat almost casually.

"Hello Mr. Irandan," he said as evenly as possible; his helmet's voice projector gave him a somewhat robotic monotone, "I'd like to ask you a few questions, if you're willing to cooperate with my investigation. Most of the other civilian staff have been more than reasonable, and I'm sure we won't have any problems."

The civilian made no reply._ He must be scared stiff_, thought Kar'tan,_ Alright, time to play the reassuring older brother type_.

"Could you tell me all that you know about the incident involving Mr. Crane?" asked Kar'tan with a bit more inflection. "Imperial procedure may dictate otherwise, but nothing you say to me can incriminate you for any offense not directly related to my investigation," he added soothingly. He had a warm feeling in his gut as he said it.

Irandan sat very still and spoke slowly as he tried to maintain his composure, but a light seemed to turn on in his eyes. "I'm not sure what I can tell you, sir," he said, speeding up slightly as he went, "I wasn't part of anything that happened in the armory, especially not that day. I was supposed to be working with Opus on level 4 but he told me he wasn't going to make it. I figured I'd keep my head down like always, and I just did my job, no questions asked, I just did my job."

Kar'tan consulted the roster data on his helmet while Irandan rambled on. _That's not right,_ he thought, _He was supposed to clean Sublevel two with Crane, and the armory is on Sublevel two. Interesting._ He didn't call out the discrepancy; it was clear that the more Irandan spoke, the more comfortable he became with Kar'tan's presence. Perhaps just a small nudge would help.

"Mr. Irandan," Kar'tan interrupted as gently as he could, "Did anyone ask you to do something specific during that time? Maybe take a small item somewhere, or check a room for anything?"

"Not that I recall," Irandan said, falling back into nervousness. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and forced his eyes downward, "Nobody noticed me while I was working."

_Great,_ Kar'tan thought,_ He's retreating again. Time to get a bit more personable._

The bounty hunter leaned back casually, waiting for a moment when he could remove his helmet without spooking the subject of his interview.

"Have you eaten recently?" he asked, trying to start a more friendly dialogue, "My partner and I have been so busy getting set up with the Imperials that I haven't had a bite to eat since Mandalore."

This wasn't especially true; Kar'tan habitually kept his hunger in check while on a job to stop his mind from wandering, but there was always room for a light snack. Hopefully, he could get the man opposite to lower his guard a little. Irandan's body language suggested that he was hiding something, but Kar'tan still couldn't quite determine what.

"I'm due for break in an hour," said the worker timidly.

Kar'tan pulled a ration bar from his duster. The things were primarily made of a tasteless nutrient gum, but had various nuts and dried fruits mixed in to give them a decent flavor. He unwrapped the bar, broke it in two, and handed the larger half to his nervous guest.

Irandan accepted it without comment, but did not immediately take a bite, as his eyes were fixed on the armored Mando.

Kar'tan chinned the switch that held his helmet in place. When locked in, the armor's neck connection could support his entire weight without discomfort. Unlocked, Kar'tan's helmet could be removed as easily as an ordinary hat.

He calmly removed the intimidating helmet and placed it on the table separating him from Irandan and bit off a chunk of bar. As he chewed placidly, eyes focused in a distracted gaze, Irandan worked up the courage to do something other than stare.

"You're human," he blurted, dumbstruck.

"What? Oh, yeah, 'course I'm human," responded Kar'tan, "What did you think I was?"

Irandan gained a bit of his earlier composure back. "I thought you were a droid or a cyborg," he said, "Some kind of hunter-killer-thing."

Kar'tan unleashed a loud snort of amusement. "Ha! A droid!" he said, forcing his laughter to be more convincing. He'd heard the comment several times before.

"Not surprised though. It's the voice projector in this thing," Kar'tan tapped the helmet lightly before putting it on again.

"Query: Is there someone that you need killed master?" he quoted, miming a 3P0 droid as he spoke. Irandan chortled softly at the performance.

"But honestly," Kar'tan said as he removed the helmet again, "You'd think it'd be easy to tell if we were organic, I mean, especially after you get used to, you know..."

"What?"

"The Stormtroopers."

"Oh! Yes," Irandan said, visibly relaxing some more, "Well, we don't see them much, and when we do, they're always so still. It's like they may as well be droids anyway."

Apparently still nothing to do with the Stormtroopers, Kar'tan thought, mentally tallying a list based on Irandan's reactions, or lack thereof. If he could narrow down what made the man nervous, Kar'tan might be able to determine more about his relationship to Crane, and the theft.

Irandan picked up the bit of ration bar and tried a bite. The expression on his face changed to one of pleasant surprise. "It's actually tasty," he said, "Where do you get them?"

"Trading post on Mandalore," responded Kar'tan offhandedly; he shifted gears to try to get back on topic. "Shall we continue?"

Irandan's face fell slightly, but he gave an answer more confidently than before.

"I wasn't witness to any of the theft, sir," his expression didn't waver, "I don't know what information I could give you."

"That's fine," Kar'tan said. He suspected more, but kept that to himself for the moment. "I believe you, but right now I want to know more about your friend Opus Crane. He's in a lot of trouble, you know. The Empire thinks he made off with a whole armory."

"Yeah, I heard." Irandan shifted in his chair slightly as he prepared to talk further. "He was into some lowlife stuff, but I didn't think he'd really be up for anything like that. Opus was always looking for a few extra credits outside work, but he never tried anything that could have cost him his job. At least, that's what he told me."

"So you don't have any idea what he planned to do with the loot?" Kar'tan asked, "Or where he intended to go with it, if he stole it?"

"No," said Irandan, but Kar'tan didn't believe him. Irritatingly, the Mandalorian couldn't place exactly why. It was just one of those gut feelings.

"When was the last time you saw him?" Kar'tan asked.

"In the mess, the morning of the theft. We were supposed to work together again, but I didn't see him after that."

"Did he say anything noteworthy to you?"

"No." Again, Kar'tan got the feeling, deep down somewhere, that Irandan wasn't being completely honest.

"Alright," said Kar'tan. _Time to cross check some discrepancies_. "You said earlier that you and Mr. Crane were supposed to be working on Level 4 and that he failed to show up for work that afternoon."

"Yes."

"I took a moment to look at the duty roster Lieutenant Bonari gave me, and according to the records for the day, you were supposed to be working on Sub Level 2. Why weren't you there?"

Irandan paused before answering again.

"Yeah, they schedule that stuff a week in advance. But, a few days before, my supervisor comes to me and says that security wanted us out of that area for an inspection or something, and that I'd been reassigned that day to work on Level 4. I didn't think anything of it, honestly."

For once, he appeared to be answering completely truthfully, and Kar'tan wondered at the massive irony of the situation. The one day a lax security crew schedules an impromptu inspection was the day someone cleans out the whole armory. Unfortunately, Kar'tan had no where else to go with his questioning. He sighed and turned back to Irandan.

"I mean, how's it going to look on me if I go above my supervisor's head because I don't understand the orders I'm getting. Makes me look dumb or suspicious. Neither one is all that great for job advancement."

Kar'tan nodded in understanding.

"That seems to be everything, Mr. Irandan," Kar'tan said wearily, "If I have any further questions, I'll get Lieutenant Bonari to schedule another meeting."

Now that the interview had concluded, Kar'tan stood up and replaced his helmet, leaving Irandan to wait for an escort back to wherever the Stormtrooper Security Detachment had found him.

Outside the room, Kar'tan stopped to think about the answers he'd received from the personnel evaluations. There were a few small items he could investigate to wring out every possible iota of information, but the only lead he could think of was Crane's relationship with Irandan. There wasn't any solid evidence to back up the hypothesis, but Kar'tan suspected that Crane was keeping tabs on his coworker to ensure that no one could follow. Irandan would have to be observed in the near future, to determine whether he'd been in contact with the thief.

Temporarily lost in thought, Kar'tan proceeded straight past Lieutenant Bonari to the holocam monitor station where Cairn had been working for the last hour. Apparently, he felt that being Kar'tan's "bad cop" was too boring when he didn't get the chance to actually rough someone up. The holo-emitters filling the room projected an eerie glow that washed over Kar'tan as he opened the door. Cairn sat silently as he observed the security recordings of the armory and its immediate exterior. Kar'tan waited for several minutes, watching the footage with his partner. The lack of holocam coverage in the armory surprised him, but he was willing to, for the moment, allow the oddity to slip by unhindered as he watched a miniature version of their target enter and exit the armory without so much as a scuff on the ferrocrete.

"Are you done yet?" asked Cairn with a shred of boredom in his voice.

"Just finished," Kar'tan said before switching to the private com as he spotted Irandan in the corridor behind him, "We have someone to keep an eye on, but not much else. Have you found anything interesting?"

"In a word, yes," replied Cairn, "but I'm still a bit confused." He pointed to Crane's image in the holoprojection, "There's Crane with a maintenance cart before the theft," he fast forwarded the projection, "and here he is afterwards. Notice anything?"

"I see no difference," said Kar'tan, not comprehending.

"Exactly," acknowledged Cairn, excitement creeping into his speech, "This is the last image of him on any holocam, so where's all the kit he stole?"

"Good question," Kar'tan remarked. He thought for a moment about this development, but didn't come to any new conclusions.

"If you're finished, it's time to go," he said, and the pair of bounty hunters exited the room to begin the long slog of footwork for their investigation.


	4. The Investigation

"Neero was spotted sir, but he managed to evade the investigators."

"Good. Just one loose end to secure."

"Sir?"

"Find your associate, Irandan. Kill him."

"Now? If the investigators find the body-"

"Let them find it. If he dies, they have nothing."

"Yes, Overseer."

Two Days Later

It took the bounty hunters two whole days to chase down the small and weak leads Kar'tan had managed to extract from the glut of interviews. The temptation to skip tracking down each more-than-likely-useless lead was huge, but it wasn't worth the chance that they would miss that vital bit of information from an improbable source. More than once in the past, the pair had been glad to have paid such close attention to detail. Unfortunately, after tracking down every scrap of evidence in town and in the barracks with no lucky break, there was no choice but to directly tail their most obvious informant.

The wind had picked up as the sun fled from the sky. The heat of the day was quickly fading, and periodically gusts kicked up trash in the streets or whirled off in small dust devils. It was the time of day when most honest citizens were beginning to disappear, replaced by the seedier elements of society.

"The minicam feeds we've collected on Mr. Irandan haven't given us much as of yet, but I'm certain you'll be able to pick up something with an old fashioned stakeout tonight. If I'm right, whoever is calling the shots will use the weekend crowds as cover to slip new orders in to our mark."

"That makes sense," said Cairn, "but if this is all we can do..."

"I wish we had more to go on, but you already know how tapped out we are at this point," responded Kar'tan.

Cairn nodded in understanding; sometimes all they had was one lead and a load of guesswork. Mandalorians had a saying: "When there is no path, blaze your own till you find one." In those situations, Kar'tan's bull-headed nature caught the trail they needed more often than not, though Cairn didn't seem to have the same luck. Last time he had been in charge, they'd chased a lead right into the middle of a gang war.

As they crossed the empty district to reach the stakeout point, he donned a simple cloak to conceal his beskar. The warm padding would make Cairn appear larger. It would be harder to look inconspicuous, but in an area as covered in shadows as Port 17's low-income neighborhoods, he would blend right in.

"So what are you going to do, sleep in?" Cairn asked as they came to a stop outside the apartment complex that both their target, Crane, and his associate, Irandan, shared.

Kar'tan chuckled.

"Hardly," he said, "I intend to get back on track with our little Rodian friend."

Cairn was now visibly irritated. "So you're going back to the KDY Not; you're going to get a pint of net'ra-gal, and I'm going to be faffing about in the cold - " His tirade was interrupted as a particularly harsh gust whipped his cloak up and he was forced to bat it back down. Cairn glanced at the sky. Thankfully, he could see no clouds gathering; as much as he liked the rain, it made for miserable stakeout weather.

"Don't be ridiculous," Kar'tan retorted, "the piss they serve here won't be nearly as refreshing as Black Ale. It will probably be Dubserwei or some other horrible nonsense the Kuati brew. Furthermore, you grabbed your outdoor gear before I even said anything. You picked your own assignment."

XXX

Fortunately for Kar'tan, the cantina's choice stock was not Dubserwei, but it wasn't much better. The drink the bartender brought him was a frothy, red concoction that tasted something like an Arkanian Mud Slug, although the regulars seemed to enjoy it just fine. Kar'tan let his sit after a polite mouthful; after all, he was on duty. Besides, he needed something to do, and if he had just sat there with his helmet on, people would get suspicious.

Kar'tan surveyed the interior of the pub. Despite the intentionally old fashioned furnishings, the place was depressingly modern in its construction. Its interior was designed to evoke images of the harsh, supposedly fulfilling life on old colony worlds. The walls were covered with manufactured wood grain paneling, the booths were made to look chipped and worn, and the dim, amber colored glowpanels were meant to suggest a warm incendiary light source, but Kar'tan had been to the_ Oyu'baat_ enough times to see how fake it all really was. Worse, the exterior broke this fragile illusion with its obviously prefab construction.

The night's gusting wind snaked through the ill-fitting door. While it made his chosen spot rather cold, the breeze at least carried away the smell of unwashed bodies and spilled drink. A tendril of frigid air found its way down his neck and into his armor. He scrunched his shoulders against it, wishing he could put his helmet back on, and contemplated the drink in front of him. Kar'tan couldn't decide which was the tougher job, enduring the alternation of cold air and strange smells, or enduring the drink for appearance sake.

_Still_,_ it beats standing outside,_ Kar'tan thought; another gust of frigid air blew past his neck.

_Mostly._

With the weekend coming and the weather turning the way it was, Kar'tan would have expected quite a lot more visitors, but neither the Rodian nor its three friends had deigned to show their faces. He had been waiting for at least two hours and the most activity had been when the owner's Spukamas lifted itself off the bar and curled up in the shadow of the windbreaker that was Kar'tan Venn, who idly petted the misplaced Corellian house cat to pass the time.

"Seen anything yet?" Kar'tan mumbled loud enough for his ear-bead to transmit to Cairn. The pea-sized radio in his ear linked to the helmet clipped to his belt, boosting the signal to reach well over 30 kilometers.

"No." There was a pause. "It's damned cold."

"Oh, quit griping; it reeks in here. Worse, I'm starting to freeze on a hard stool pretending to enjoy my red... whatever-the-_shab_-this-drink-is-supposed-to-be. At least you get to move around to keep warm."

"So the cantina _isn't_ heated, I feel my mood improving."

"Glad to hear that_ you're_ happy." Kar'tan retorted.

"Still no sign of that jittery Rodian?" Cairn asked.

"Neither him nor his friends," Kar'tan said. He took a second to force down another mouthful of his drink for appearance sake; the swill was now two thirds gone, and Kar'tan's taste buds couldn't take much more. "I'm starting to think that maybe this wasn't a usual place for him to duck int – "

"Shh." Cairn cut his partner off with a low hiss.

Kar'tan struggled through an tense silence.

"Movement, apartment 3B, Crane's place."

"So he's there?" Kar'tan asked.

"Maybe," said Cairn. "It's hard to identify by the shadow."

There was another long pause.

Biding his time in the silence, Kar'tan scratched behind the Spukamas' ear; it purred in delight. He smiled, pleased by the little beast and the cover it provided. Anyone watching would assume that he was lightheartedly talking to the feline. As he waited, Kar'tan noticed the bartender impatiently looking at a glowing chrono on the wall.

"Hm, it's a Rodian; he just got close to the window," said Cairn.

"That sounds familiar," said Kar'tan, "Any chance he's on his way out? Bartender's getting shifty, as if he's expecting a visitor."

"Maybe he's waiting for a regular, now shush. Okay, lights are off; there he goes," said Cairn. "I need better cover if I want to pursue. Time to hit the roof."

There was another long pause. The cat rolled over and playfully batted at Kar'tan's hand. He toyed with it while keeping a relaxed watch on the door. The last thing he needed was the bartender recognizing that he was also waiting for someone to "drop by." Kar'tan wished his helmet didn't need to stay clipped to his belt; its wraparound sensor came was very handy at times like these.

"Looks like he's headed straight for you. Stupid_ hu'tuun_ isn't even_ trying_ to check for a tail," said Cairn. "I'm going to circle around and settle near the back door just in case."

"Copy that." Kar'tan replied.

The Rodian walked in moments later with an air of extreme nervousness.

_'Jittery' indeed._ Kar'tan thought.

The bartender glared at the bug-eyed alien as it tried, and failed, to act casually; his icy stare forced Kar'tan to wonder what part the man played in all of this. The Rodian winced under the hard gaze and sat down in a mostly private booth. Kar'tan could now at least keep an eye on it through the mirror mounted on the stock cupboard opposite his seat. After several minutes of fidgeting and unconvincing calmness, the green alien did something that Kar'tan could not have anticipated: it completely disappeared from view.

Kar'tan's bafflement nearly gave way to audible noise; it took everything he had to remain completely still as he watched the bartender turn towards him. Kar'tan quickly pointed his eyes down as though there was something incredibly interesting in his drink.

Despite his outward composure, a reflexive tongue-click cued Cairn in that something was amiss.

"What? What happened?"

"It just... disappeared," Kar'tan mumbled, now relaxing his posture a bit. He glanced at the bartender as the other man opened the stock cupboard to fiddle with the bottles inside. Kar'tan was hard pressed to clear the scowl off his face by the time the man turned and caught him looking up.

"Drink not to your liking?" The man asked. "Perhaps I can get you something else?"

"What do you mean 'it disappeared'?" Kar'tan's ear bead quirked insistently.

"No thanks, I'd rather not have a massive headache in the morning," said Kar'tan distractedly. He tossed a few credits on the bar. "If a little blonde number comes in looking for me, tell her I got tired of waiting," he said, gave the Spukamas one last pat, and headed for the door. The bartender's gaze followed him out.

"Nice cover," Cairn said.

"Figured it would explain sitting on my backside for two hours."

"So what did you mean by disappeared?" Cairn asked.

"I mean" Kar'tan said when he replaced his helmet, "It disappeared and I don't have a clue where it went."

"Fierfek."

XXX

The Following Morning

"So… what was it? Cloaking, a sliding wall panel, a hologram?"

Kar'tan looked up from his fruit salad with a discouraged expression. Whatever that drink was made out of, it had not played nicely with his stomach.

"I'm still not sure." Kar'tan counted off on his fingers, "You and I saw him the entire time he was out of the apartment; last I checked holograms can't open doors, which he did, a sliding wall panel would have been too slow, and even if that drink was drugged it wasn't a hallucination because you tailed him there."

"What about camouflage?" Cairn asked.

"Unless he's some sort of genetically modified Rodian, hardly."

"And you're sure you didn't look away for anything? Not even a little blonde number?"

He leaned back and sighed in exasperation. "The place was basically empty. All I can say for sure is that Opus, the rodian, and the bartender are part of the same equation. If we can get the values to a few more variables, we might find an answer."

Cairn looked down at his breakfast; his eggs and nerf steak were looking less and less appealing. The authenticity of the meat seemed rather dubious and he began to consider that maybe this tapcaf wasn't worth the long walk from the spaceport.

"You think this might be Alliance work?" he asked pushing the food around on his plate with his fork. Maybe he just hadn't been all that hungry anyway.

"Doubtful. Theft hasn't been their style since before Derra IV, especially since they recruited the Mon Cals," Kar'tan said before popping another slice of fruit in his mouth. "Regardless, if you were going to hinder the Empire, would you steal weapons from a ground base on Kuat or simply blow up as much of the planet as you could?"

"Personally, I'd hit the Ring." Cairn pointed at the KDY space station; its thin, arch-like presence was clearly visible in the morning sky.

The pair sat in the ominous silence of the statement while the crowd moving past the tapcaf began to grow.

Kar'tan ran his fingers over his shaved scalp. "Maybe it's a more local thing."

"I'd like to see a hutt make someone disappear as fast. Besides, that's some pretty advanced tech for small timers," said Cairn, "It sounds more like Black Sun or Tyber Zann."

"No, it's not Zann" Kar'tan said confidently. Cairn gave him a confused expression. "It doesn't feel right. You remember when the Consortium stole those prototypes about 5 years back?"

"How could I forget?" Cairn growled, "It was an insult to all of us as Mandalorians. If MandalMotors can't keep track of its designs, how can the rest of us be considered competent?"

"Yes, yes, I know," replied Kar'tan, but Cairn was still scowling. "Regardless, when his mercs made the initial blueprint raid, there was a very noticeable bloke leading the operation."

"I remember the vids. Red armor over black bodysuit, stupid hat."

"Exactly, Zann's goons loved being visible, loved being the center of the operation. Black Sun's more or less the same. This isn't like that; it's too subtle, inasmuch as piracy can be_ subtle_." Kar'tan practically spat the last word. "Between Crane's utter absence, this business with the Rodian, and a complete lack of evidence elsewhere, it seems like this group is trying extremely hard not to be noticed. I'm beginning to suspect that there was some very _thorough_ clean up over the last week."

Cairn continued staring off into space, "We should hit Zann."

Kar'tan sighed, but stopped short of rolling his eyes; he felt the same way, no doubt, but there was a job at hand. "Like we're ever going to get a contract on the guy. We're _bounty hunters_, not vigilantes." He thought for a few moments while Cairn continued frowning, "We should check the armory. You told me that all of the interior footage had been corrupted; maybe we can find something that the Imperials missed."

XXX

Summoned by Kar'tan's cordial transmission to the barracks, Lieutenant Bonari met them at the gatehouse.

"Excellent morning lieutenant," Kar'tan said as he and Cairn passed the guard's checkpoint booth, "The proceedings of our investigation currently require that my partner and I more thoroughly analyze the crime scene. Something was_ missed_." he said snidely.

At the word "missed," Bonari made a disapproving expression, but showed no other reaction to Kar'tan's baiting. He motioned to the guards his intent to provide escort, and the pair of visitors walked calmly behind him.

Kar'tan mentally evaluated then nodded in greeting at nearly every Stormtrooper they passed. His knee-jerk reaction to notice and appreciate soldiers in helmets had been part of his character since his father first displayed what a Mandalorian could do in full armor. In an empty section of the interior complex, he took a moment to focus on Cairn.

After years of working together, it had been made very clear who did what on a reconnaissance op. While he was capable of performing detailed environmental assessments, Kar'tan's observations would generally come across as rather scatterbrained. Small details would often end up at the forefront of his consciousness and connect with other, possibly related bits of information at the expense of the larger picture. It worked well in an investigation and dealing with personnel by feeding his intuition, but untempered, he could easily get lost in the minutia of a suspect's backstory.

In this regard, Cairn was his balance. His even temperment allowed Kar'tan to set a more stable pace, and while Kar'tan could disseminate data quickly, Cairn collected it best.

Kar'tan watched his partner stride through the base. Cairn's head made minute movements as his gaze shifted from point to point, and Kar'tan could almost see his HUD swinging left and right as they passed adjacent corridors. His body language changed slightly. Cairn slouched a bit, made quieter steps, and stopped moving his arms. He seemed diminished, unnoticeable, like a beggar in the underlevels of Coruscant.

There should be lots of information to pick through, thought Kar'tan.

The Lieutenant spoke, breaking the apparently awkward silence that had persisted among the group since the base's entrance. "We ran all the standard scans, but there wasn't anything incriminating. Crane must have cleaned up before he left. The only real lead we had was that he left the base and never came back."

"And his presence on the security footage during the theft," said Cairn.

"What?" asked Bonari as he came to a stop. Kar'tan, who had been paying more direct attention to the security chief, thought he saw something flash over the man's face before he regained composure. "Oh, yes, of course, he was the only one to enter the armory that afternoon."

"Yeah, I watched the recordings over and over. I could probably draw that hallway from memory by now," said Cairn with an air of absentmindedness. Kar'tan wondered what had caught his attention so thoroughly.

Bonari chuckled lightly as he continued on again. "I'm sure I could recreate the layout of the entire complex in my sleep. I've inspected every inch at one point or another."

"I see you take your job very seriously, Lieutenant," said Kar'tan, "This must be a grave insult to your professional pride." He twisted his helmet slightly towards Cairn, who nodded in return.

"Commander Karjeel places a lot of faith in you," said Cairn "It seems well spent."

"Yes, well, the Commander has been suffering from his post here. He finds it easy to trust me to handle all of the day to day rigmarole of over-watch in a city," said Bonari. He began counting with his fingers, "Inspecting shipping manifests, keeping the municipal government in line, managing the civilian crew, it's all so tedious to a battlefield commander like Karjeel. I'm simply used to the task by now."

Bonari stopped walking again, as they had reached the heavy durasteel door of the armory. The trooper posted there saluted before stepping out of the way.

"Karjeel must know a good officer when he meets one," said Kar'tan, "Now if you will excuse us, Lieutenant, we would like to conduct our investigation in as much privacy as we can manage. Our inspection gear is fairly sensitive, and we wouldn't want to find false evidence." The insinuation felt a bit heavy in his mind, but Bonari simply nodded as if he didn't notice.

"I will be in my office if you need anything."

The security chief closed the blast door, leaving the bounty hunters alone in the armory.


	5. The Armory

Although the departing Security Chief had secured the opening against potential interlopers, Cairn scanned the blast door to be absolutely sure that no one could spy on the pair of investigators. He nodded to Kar'tan, signifying that it was clean, but having seen the base's actual security measures, Kar'tan still felt a vague uneasiness about the situation.

Regardless, there were protocols to follow if they were going to find anything down here. Helmet recorders active, the investigators made a cursory inspection of the entire room. An overview would give them a starting point, if nothing else. Next, the pair methodically pulled all the lockers and vaults away from the walls to check for any structural tampering. When the heaviest items were arranged in the center of the room, Kar'tan let Cairn take a break to fine-tune his inspection gear.

The device he used was a Bothan-made "Multi-Spectral Sensor Suite," modified specifically to link with his helmet's computer. Properly adjusted, it allowed him to detect and analyze even the smallest particulates of organic or inorganic matter and identify them at range.

Cairn removed his helmet to activate and calibrate the various components of the MS3. Its advanced features possessed such extreme sensitivity and resource requirements that the module couldn't remain on all the time.

Proper tuning required that Cairn be very focused and still, but Kar'tan picked up on the uncertainty in his subtle body language.

"You don't trust our Imperial hosts." The statement hung in the air like a blastershot on a cold morning. Cairn, seemingly oblivious to the question, continued making adjustments to his helmet.

The resulting silence was thick enough to cut with a vibroknife.

"In a word: no," he said as he looked over at his partner.

"I'm not saying I do either," Kar'tan said, making a conciliatory gesture.

The expression on Cairn's face spoke volumes, but Kar'tan was nothing if not paranoid about specifics during any investigation.

He returned the look with a raised eyebrow, which he realized rather belatedly, went unseen behind his visor. However, his reinforced helmet's subconscious tilt still gave voice to the demand for clarity.

"Holocams," replied Cairn "Did you count the broken ones?"

"As a matter of fact, I did not," said Kar'tan with displeasure. Cairn knew that while he was capable of performing a full reconnaissance, Kar'tan's scatterbrained observations meant that a group operation would flow best when someone else performed the environmental assessments. His focus had been on personnel, and all that he could remember about the walk related directly to who he had seen along the way. He wracked his brain to remember small details from the journey to the armory as he returned to moving the rifle lockers, lifting one several centimeters rather than letting the metal rend across the floor with an unnerving shriek.

"15" said Cairn, interrupting Kar'tan's recollection with the answer. "15 broken holocams on the route that we took here. Nearly every one was at a junction or covering a door. The only cam of any use is the one just outside! It's almost as if someone wanted us to see Crane, but no one else."

"Maybe," Kar'tan said.

"Besides, you would expect that with a security gap like that they would have started replacing them by now." The volume of his voice steadily rose, "Not to mention a host of other problems: empty riot stations, missing -or empty- rifle racks, poorly maintained alarm triggers; I mean, the list just goes on." He paused for a moment as he adjusted his targeting stalk; the device was useful in here because it could double as a close-range magnifier.

"Bonari's either criminally incompetent," he continued, "or he's got a reason for keeping a base in disarray like this."

Kar'tan considered the assessment. In situations like this one, he felt that their normal bickering sessions were excellent practice for scrutinizing collected data during an investigation - once they got past the verbal sparring in non-professional situations. At this point, he knew it was his job to play _hu'tuun'_s advocate to help develop Cairn's hypothesis.

"Is it possible that this is merely symptomatic of the base being on Kuat?" he asked experimentally, "I mean, 'Imperial Loyal, Small Ground Operations' in the dossier? Especially with a bored veteran like Karjeel at the helm. It seems normal that some things might be in ...disarray."

"Yeah, sure, that fits some of the damage," returned Cairn, "but it doesn't feel right. For starters, the disarray should be more sporadic, random. It's too regular and too obvious. Besides, if there's a civilian maintenance crew, why haven't they tried to fix the holocams?"

"A better question would be, with so many already disabled cameras, why wouldn't Crane smash the one above the door?" asked Kar'tan, "It's almost as if he either didn't care because he knew no one else was going that way, or he wanted any investigator to focus on that."

Having finished moving everything during their conversation, Kar'tan began a preliminary inspection of the now organized and separated rifle lockers and heavy weapon vaults. He looked for any sign of tampering or deformity in the surfaces that would normally indicate theft. Conversely, Cairn busied himself with inspecting the bulkheads to rule out the possibility of a third party tunneling into the armory. If someone had cut their way in, there would definitely be heat damage from the fusion torches required for such a job.

"An innocent explanation may be that they don't know how to fix the cams," ventured Kar'tan after a long period. For the moment, neither of them was willing to disturb the proverbial "Bantha in the Room," but letting it sit there was starting to agitate him.

More disconcertingly, Kar'tan's cursory examination of the rifle lockers revealed no damage whatsoever. Evidently, the doors had simply been unlocked normally or, perhaps more in line with the current train of thought, left open. Cairn would have to verify, but Kar'tan's own suspicions only grew from there.

"The real question here is: what would Bonari -who, so far as I , and apparently you, can tell, is most likely to perpetrate a mass security fault- gain from purposely keeping the base security in shambles?" asked Kar'tan.

"Well, what's obvious?" Cairn asked, "Drug trafficking, black market sales ...slave trade." He spoke the last words softly. Their previous trip to Ryloth, with its culturally demanded slave trade, had been... bad, for everyone involved.

His unspoken reverie was broken by Kar'tan's continuation. "That's assuming Bonari is the guilty party here, though even if he's not, the man ought to be court martialed for the condition of the place." He sighed, "We just don't have enough direct evidence; everything is circumstantial."

With his last word, like a Dejarik stratagem aligning into checkmate, Kar'tan realized why, deep down, he didn't trust the security chief. "I don't know if you noticed," he said, slyly, not wanting to blurt out his revelation, "but when you mentioned the holocam recordings, for a moment, Bonari looked a bit like he was ready to die of fright."

Kar'tan realized that the Lieutenant's momentary display of fear was crucial to his position in this mystery. Had it occurred during an interview, he might have had the inclination to press the issue rather vigorously, but during casual conversation, his mind had merely written it off as something else entirely. Now the truth seemed obvious: Security Chief Bonari was afraid the pair might have seen something besides the official story.

Cairn stopped scanning, apparently catching the vibe. "Yeah, that means..." he hesitated as he put the pieces together in his head, "That means he thought, if only for a moment, I saw whoever was in here actually committing the theft."

"Exactly, our evidence is circumstantial _at best_ that Crane actually stole anything," continued Kar'tan, "if we had better holocam evidence, we'd be out there already, looking for the stockpile." He sighed again, "There's just so little to go on; the 'back-to-basics' approach should give us another clue."

"So you're sure now that the lieutenant is hiding evidence," said Cairn as he moved on to the south, and last, bulkhead for his inspection. The multi-spectral scanner had done its job correctly, but, puzzlingly, there was still no sign of tunneling, which, even given the convenience of the poorly maintained automated security, seemed to be the only way that one man, or even a group of men, could have gotten the contents of the whole armory past the personnel stationed throughout the base.

"At the very least," said Kar'tan, "but for what reason? He may be in on it, or he may just be so unqualified to hold his position-" having no words to actually finish the thought he mutely motioned with his hands. "And it still doesn't mean that I have a clue as to what he's got, though."

There was a momentary pause as he changed gears in the conversation, "Have you noticed anything odd yet?"

"Odd how?" asked Cairn.

"Well, these rifle racks are perfectly intact. No damage whatsoever," replied Kar'tan, gesturing half-heartedly at the stacks of empty lockers, "It's almost like nothing was stolen."

"That _is_ odd," said Cairn thoughtfully, "They're just like these bulkheads, no fusion burns, no dents, no -" he drifted off as his targeting stalk caught a minuscule detail in the bulkhead, "That's interesting..."

Kar'tan, intrigued, approached the portion of the wall Cairn was staring at.

"What?" he asked.

"Look here," said Cairn, pointing to a near-invisible seam in the forged durasteel. His outstretched finger moved upwards, slowly tracing its entire outline.

"A door," Kar'tan blurted, incredulous.

"Uh hunh," said Cairn, "It must be laser cut: down to _microns_ of clearance."

"Ten credits," said Kar'tan, "Ten credits says they put it here when the building was originally manufactured."

"Is this an Imperial prefab?" Cairn asked.

"Nope," said Kar'tan, "You can tell by the architecture; it's Old Republic style."

"Then I'm not taking that bet," replied Cairn, turning back to the hidden aperture in the wall. "This kind of precision is definitely not a remodel."

Kar'tan began tapping the door for hollow sounds that might give away any mechanisms; finding nothing, he gave it a hard shove, just in case it really was that easy.

Inside the confines of his helmet, Cairn blink-shifted through most of the MS3's spectrograph frequencies. "Scanning ...yeah, I'm getting a dead-space right here, at least a hundred meters out and down; there's definitely an interference panel. Not the usual material though, no wonder I didn't catch it sooner..." he trailed off again as he began inspecting the corners of the door.

Kar'tan watched as his partner searched for weak points that might allow them access into this hidden chamber. _At least a hundred meters,_ he thought, _Sounds like a passageway, not a room. No, it couldn't be, could it?_

Kar'tan accessed his HUD's mapping transceiver. The firmware application used a pair of transmitters on the ARC as a reference point for any planet that they might land on; all he had to do was download an atlas of the area from Imperial Records, arrange it manually with the help of a compass or Ground Network database, and presto, instant ground-tracking on an urban op.

As the program started up, Kar'tan accessed the local network and downloaded Port 17's topographical map. When it was finished, he manually arranged their position on the atlas in relation to the ARC's, a difficult task to perform even with voice commands.

Kar'tan faced the door. _Now, the passage goes directly south from here... _He marked a straight line from their position down through Port 17 on his map. It passed through several structures before exiting completely, but one building in particular caught his eye.

"Hey, stop for a second," he said, patting his partner's shoulder.

"What?" asked Cairn in a disgruntled tone.

"Bring up your Map Program,"Kar'tan responded, almost giddy now. "I'll load the relevant data."

"Oh," said Cairn after the program synced, "you're good."

The disguised passage pointed directly at the KDY Not.

XXX

"Should someone follow them more closely, sir?"

"No. We are perfectly safe here."

"Neero said-"

"I don't care what that ignorant rodian tells you! Irandan is dead, the armory is clean, and I will not tolerate further interruption. You are dismissed."

"Yes, Overseer."

XXX

The noonday sun blazed high in the sky as Ground Port #17's working class massed in the streets for their lunch breaks. The two Mandalorians had joined them, splitting up, loosing themselves in separate crowds, yet still connected by their comm units. The mystery they had fallen into was driving Kar'tan up the wall with paranoia.

"Look, if Bonari is the ringleader here, or even a major player, he'll have someone tailing us. He'll want to know what we know and when we know it. If he suspects we know too much then we'll find our leads drying up, or dying off."

"It's happened before." Cairn said dismissively. "Sometimes preemptive action on their part leads us closer to our target."

"And when it doesn't, the job turns into more trouble than it's worth."

"Okay," Cairn responded distastefully, and Kar'tan could tell he was rolling his eyes. "But, I'm just saying this is too extreme; there was no reason for us to split up!"

Kar'tan sighed. He weighed the time and frustration it would take to explain to Cairn how he hoped to flush out their follower against the attention he was paying to his surroundings. He still couldn't shake the feeling that they were being watched more closely than usual. Their revelation in the armory had put him on edge.

"Just keep your eyes peeled" Kar'tan commanded.

"Hey wait... you're not using me as bait again are you?" Cairn whined.

"Oh, come on. Not that again." Kar'tan growled.

"I mean, I can handle it, but it'd be nice if you told me for once."

Kar'tan sighed, "I'm not using you as bait."

"I'm not like a third party who we need to act natural so we keep them in the dark. I am acting natural, even when I'm on the job or being trailed by a team mate," Cairn prattled on.

"I said that I'm not using you as bait. We split up because that way we have a better chance of exposing a follower and we can cover more ground. I'm not trailing you or watching your back, which is why I want you to _keep your eyes peeled_."

"Alright, I get it," said Cairn in a softer tone, "Let's just get this done. Besides," he said, getting a little more animated again, "how's anyone going to take me? I'm in full armor and I have a prime physique. I obviously maintain a ver-"

Kar'tan dialed his volume down to an almost inaudible buzz for a ten count before turning it back up for safety's sake. With no further input from Kar'tan, Cairn had thankfully exhausted his indignation.

The pair continued through the midday crowds with their usual carelessness and disdain for unarmored foreigners, carving separate, meandering paths through the lower markets in an attempt to disguise their trail. The two of them had spent years tracking difficult prey through urban centers, and they understood the necessary procedures involved to avoid and flush a tail. The most basic rule was to never take a direct route, anywhere. A winding, pattern-less course forced any stalkers to remain close by, and a potential pursuer would need to take a route that was far too coincidentally related to their target than statistics normally allowed.

Kar'tan arbitrarily turned left past a hat vendor and walked as calmly as he could manage down the packed street. The stalls blurred together as he searched the sea of bodies surrounding him for foul intent. Every few moments, he scanned the crowds behind him, searching for any reappearing faces. If he saw the same person more than twice it was a good bet that they were onto him. Checking his rear was thankfully aided by his helmet's disguise of his actual focus. A tail could never be sure just exactly where he was looking, or if he had an eye facing backward.

The winding path he took through the mass of bodies nearly caused him to collide with a few other pedestrians, but situational awareness kept Kar'tan fluid enough to avoid a catastrophe. The last thing he needed was to cause a disturbance.

Having determined he wasn't being tailed, or at least if he was, his tail was someone more skilled than him in surveillance, Kar'tan made another seemingly random turn toward his goal.

XXX

On nearly the opposite side of the market, Cairn employed another tactic to pick out a potential stalker. He stepped in front of a footwear merchant to inspect what appeared to be a miner's boot. Like Kar'tan, he routed erratically and scanned the crowds, but instead of walking continuously, he stopped to look for familiar faces. Thankfully the market had plenty of stalls that could believably interest him. Only the worst possible tail would fail to notice that Cairn was onto him if he decided to stop at a stall selling women's clothing.

Cairn continued his pattern until the destination was barely a stone's throw away. He had yet to see any stalkers, but Cairn couldn't let his guard down until he and Kar'tan arrived; he hoped that their evasive tactics had kept anyone from realizing that the pair of bounty hunters were headed for the KDY not.

A fuzzy feeling crept into Cairn's gut. In the distance, he saw his partner just outside their destination. Kar'tan had arrived first, as he usually did, but the larger man was still savvy enough to appear distracted with the merchant stalls surrounding the cantina while he waited. Despite the desire to hurry, Cairn forced himself to make one more arbitrary detour to confuse any pursuers before proceeding to the cantina. On his way there, he watched behind Kar'tan to see if anyone was taking an ill-advised interest in the other Mandalorian.

"Ready?" he asked as he moved to his partner's side.

"Yeah," Kar'tan replied, a little wearily.

The pub loomed over them as they approached its open door. Although his helmet only detected four heat signatures, Cairn braced himself for blaster fire as he stepped over the boundary into the dark interior.


	6. The Secret

"You! Made! This mistake! Mr. Crane!"

"Sir, everything was accounted for, the holocams only show my face, the armory, and our apartments, were completely cleaned, twice, and Neero took care of Irandan!"

"Then explain to me how they know! Explain to me how they knew where to look for the door! Explain to me why they're outside the KDY Not, again!"

"Sir, I don't think-"

"I don't pay you to think! I pay you to do what I tell you!"

"Yes, Overseer."

XXX

"You mind not breaking the door on your way in?" demanded the bartender as the door flew open.

The pair of bounty hunters paused just inside of the threshold; Kar'tan removed his helmet and clipped it to his belt. Cairn would have followed suit, but a clenching feeling in his gut brought forth a desire to stay "buttoned up."

"Sorry," Kar'tan said sheepishly, "It's really... hot out there."

The barman, apparently satisfied with the answer, turned away with a scowl as the Mandalorians sat down at what Kar'tan had identified as the Rodian's booth from the night before.

"You're sure he sat there?" Cairn asked, gesturing at the seat his partner had chosen.

"That mirror may be dirty," replied Kar'tan as he pointed at the bar, "But I had a clear enough view."

The reflective surface looked as though it had been sprayed with all manner of viscous fluids, but when he looked over, Cairn could make out his reflection clearly enough.  
>"I believe you, but-"<p>

Cairn was cut off by the presence of the bartender. The man still had a mild scowl, but something about him rubbed Cairn the wrong way.

"What will you be having today?" he asked lightly.

"Two cups of Caf will be fine," said Kar'tan.

"For you?" the bartender asked.

"It was a long morning," Kar'tan said.

"Anything else?" asked the barman as he looked pointedly at Cairn.

"No thanks," Cairn responded, "The light's killing my eyes."

"Ah," said the bartender, his expression softening. "I know what you mean. I'll be right back."

Kar'tan looked back at his partner. "Light's brighter in the Oyu'baat, and you've been able to drink me under the table. Are you going to take it off?" he asked as he pointed to his own head.

"No."

Kar'tan sighed and put an armored hand on his face.

"I'm not taking it off," Cairn said preemptively. "You get bad feelings and so do I."

As he said the words, he heard a comlink beep from across the pub. The shrill noise caught Cairn's attention in the relative silence; alerted, he looked over at the bar. The bartender had just finished pouring their Caf and had his hand to his ear, a wire ran down his arm to a location behind the ale taps. _The comlink is his,_ Cairn thought, dismissing his alarm.

Kar'tan continued as though he hadn't heard anything. "And how does this help us?," he asked gesturing to Cairn's helmeted head, "We need to be less suspicious looking."

Cairn held his hand, palm out, in an abortive gesture. The bartender was returning from out of Kar'tan's field of view.

The man placed the drinks on the table, but said nothing. His whole demeanor had changed. Gone was the look of understanding in the man's eyes. Cairn saw only an expression of apprehension.

"Thanks." said Kar'tan distractedly, not noticing the bartender. Cairn could see that his attention was focused on the various fixtures of their booth.

_Right, the 'hidden switch' he mentioned,_ Cairn thought.

The barkeep scurried off towards the backroom, and a flag came up in Cairn's mind. He put his hand on his left elbow, fingers resting on the first of his hidden knives, but the man returned with nothing more than a can of Gor Apples.

"Keep watch," said Kar'tan as he sipped his Caf. His neutral expression didn't change as he started randomly pressing on pieces of the decor. Cairn knew he was trying to look bored, though odds were low that anyone would notice or care, unless this booth was special and they were being watched.

Cairn continued watching as bartender went about normal business. Occasionally, he sneaked glances towards the bounty hunters' booth, but Cairn's main impression seemed to be that he was waiting for something.

For what? Cairn thought.

His observation was interrupted by a sharp click.

"Hey, I think I f –"

Cairn turned to see the top of his partner's head disappear below the table. He jumped out of the booth, shouting, "Kar'tan! Kar'tan, can you hear me!" But neither his comm nor the empty air gave a response.

The other patrons in the cantina looked up at the commotion, but Kar'tan had already disappeared without a trace. The seat that he had been on looked as if it had never been used; much less that someone had just apparently been swallowed by it. In the back of his mind, Cairn suspected he looked ridiculous for yelling at the vacant booth, but the thought quickly evaporated as he turned to the bartender and extracted his blaster, moving deliberately toward the man. The barkeep moved to run, but a knife streaked in front of him and buried itself in the wall, causing him to fall back and cower on the floor as the other patrons dropped everything and scrambled out the door.

Cairn approached cautiously, wary of potential weapons available underneath the wood of the bar. Blaster outstretched, he peered over the counter to find the small man cowering in the corner of his workstation.

"Get up!" Cairn barked, deadly serious, as he removed his knife from the wall without looking away from the frightened man.

The bartender complied, shying away from the tip of the blaster. His face was pale and sweating from fear. Cairn pointed toward the back room with the knife. The bartender preceded him into the kitchen, trying to look at Cairn over his shoulder more than the direction he was walking.

"We're going to have a little chat," Cairn said, letting his anger seethe into his words.

He placed a pot of water on the stove and turned the heat up.

"You have until the water boils. Start talking."

XXX

"Blair, I have a special task for you. We're about to receive an unwelcome guest, and I would appreciate it if you could be so kind as to collect him."

"By your command, Overseer."

XXX

_Not a Boma nest, not a Boma nest, not a Boma nest this time,_ thought Kar'tan as he sped down the slick durasteel slide. The passage was too steep for him to slow down. He cursed himself for, again, not packing his blade-catch gauntlets.

Like the much smaller slopes at a children's amusement park, the slide gradient slowly leveled until he hit a pile of dirty mattresses and old rags on the basement floor. A cloud of dust filled the empty room, causing Kar'tan to cough like an asthmatic until he replaced his helmet.

He fastened it in place and took a deep breath. It filtered out the dust, but it was also easier to draw a breath knowing that he was that much less vulnerable to attack in this unknown territory.

"Cairn! Cairn, can you read me?"

There was no response on his comm, even after switching three channels. It was either getting too much interference, had been damaged on the way down, or was purposefully being blocked. Whatever the problem was, he was on his own for the time being.

He half expected to see Cairn come sliding down after him, but after several seconds of waiting, he gave up any hope of that. Kar'tan wondered if perhaps the distraction caused by his sudden fall had given ambushers enough time to catch Cairn off guard. They could be getting set to kill him, for all Kar'tan knew. Cairn was no slouch, but there was no telling how many people had burst into the room, just waiting to capture the two of them. There are so many possibilities... he thought, feeling the urge to calculate the odds on how long Cairn could last during interrogation or sadistic torture.

Kar'tan stopped and took a deep breath before he became frantic, packing the destructive thoughts into the back of his mind, where they couldn't interfere with his own survival. If Cairn was in any sort of trouble, he wouldn't be able to do a thing about it anyway. Kar'tan was alone, but now he might be able to get to the bottom of this mystery. He got up from the ratty landing pad and drew his E-11-A blaster. The cut-down rifle fit perfectly in his hand as he approached the door opposite the slide he had arrived in. The door was a primitive slide-away, unlike most of the motorized prefab models that were part of the Empire's infrastructure. Kar'tan slowly pushed it open to look into the adjacent corridor.

There was no one in sight.

Kar'tan calmly stepped into the hall as he watched the other doors for signs of activity, but it seemed that this wing of the underground facility was used for little more than an access for the slide.

The Mandalorian heard a noise coming from the entryway farthest from the slide room while he was busy checking the various doors to see where each led. Dropping into a crouch, he quietly edged to the final door to cover it in case someone unexpectedly pushed their way inside. The noise stopped, leaving Kar'tan cautious, but overwhelmingly curious. _Now what?_ he thought.

The door remained closed, but Kar'tan couldn't shake the feeling that this is where he needed to go to find out more about the facility. He took a chance and slowly pushed the door open.

The room beyond was nothing that Kar'tan could have anticipated. Structured like an immense hangar, the gigantic room stretched a good kilometer away from him, and its floor was lined, as far as he could see, with staggered rows of duraplast pallet stacks 3 meters square and 2 meters apart. The seemingly random placement of the stacks, combined with lights placed only at the edges of the field, meant that the majority of the crates were kept in darkness.

Deciding it would be wise to take cover in shadow, Kar'tan darted forward into the pallet stacks. His new source of cover would keep him hidden long enough to formulate some kind of escape plan, or so he thought.

Unbeknownst to him, Kar'tan was already being followed.

XXX

A black suited figure silently crawled on top of the stacks, tracking the Mandalorian as he crept towards the facility's center. The slim humanoid was covered in a matte black armored bodysuit partially made of a blast resistant fiberweave; it had been carefully crafted to conceal heat and diffuse light. Its non-reflective helmet hid all facial features, and the armor within the suit disguised any notion of species or gender. This creature was completely at home in the anonymity of the shadow.

_These guards are useless,_ the figure thought. It was as if they saw the world as one plane. They never looked up during their rounds. They walked the same routes at the same pace. Worse than being predictable, they would grow so used to seeing the same things over and over that they would begin to miss details.

Another regular patrol passed by beneath the Mando. He watched them as if deciding whether or not to snap their necks, and then turned to check behind himself. The figure dropped to the floor and peeked around a stack as its prey scanned the area it had just been occupying._ Finally, something that makes my blood rush._

The bounty hunter moved on and the black-clad figure reascended the stacks. Moving from aisle to aisle silently it tracked both the patrols and the Mando. As a suitably large patrol caught the bounty hunter's attention, the figure readied an attack. It would have been easy to knock over the stack that he had perched on, sending the Mando tumbling into the guards, but the overseer would be less than happy with damaged merchandise, and there was still a chance that he could get away.

XXX

Instantly, Kar'tan knew that he was in trouble. The weight that slammed into him had a living quality to it. He felt two humanoid hands tangling in his armor just before he was ripped off the top of the stack. He crashed to the ground and breathed a thanks to the Man'da that he had his helmet on when his head bounced off the stone floor.

He reached back, but his assailant was already pushing off him, out of reach. The five guards he'd been watching bolted around the corner, blasters drawn. Still on the floor, he grabbed for a weapon, anything, when he felt something thin press against the beskar-weave at the back of his neck; it had a sharp point, like a blade.

"Surrender," a modulated voice spat as the pressure on his neck increased.

XXX

Cairn sealed the refresher door with a few grams of the welding jelly Kar'tan always made him carry. The small bartender inside was startled by the resulting sparks, but made no sounds.

Having one's hands bound and mouth gagged can do that.

The "little chat" Cairn had administered had gone over rather quickly, as the diminutive man had been just too eager to talk. He talked about the code to open the concealed doorway and the interference plate built into the rock; he talked about the layout of the complex beneath them; and more importantly, he talked about the operation under the ground. The little man said many things to his interrogator, and the conversation ended cleanly, but Cairn knew that his true work had only just begun.

He watched calmly as the rear wall of the refrigerator swung open to reveal the passage below.


	7. The Facility

The KDY Not's clandestine entrance tunnel was a patrol route loathed by most of the pirates stationed within the buried R & D complex. The passage shared its limited space with the various hydration and waste disposal systems in Port 17, and its overhead glowpanels shorted out from the moisture. As a result, the tunnel was often barely lit, the low ceiling was made lower by the network of crisscrossing pipes, and the dank conditions were the perfect breeding ground for rancid mildew and fungus.

Generally, the pirates lowest in command and experience would be forced to patrol this area, leading many veterans of the group to call it "The Initiation Funnel." Others had more repugnant names that they never uttered in front of their commanders, and with good reason. When the flow of new recruits slowed to a trickle, the bosses used the area as punishment for wayward personnel. Particularly dissident gang members would quickly find themselves patrolling the tunnel barefoot.

A lone pirate stalked up the dim corridor towards the entrance to the KDY Not. His boots clapped heavily on the ferrocrete stairs as he climbed to the upper level of the hidden tunnel.

"Stupid barman," he grumbled, "Can't even use a comlink properly. ...hate this stupid tunnel... Why do I always end up having to do this?" As he moved further up the hall, the angry rookie punctuated his complaints with various grunts and sighs.

At the end of the corridor, he sniffed and wrinkled his nose in disgust. The smell of molten metal had mixed with the usual mildew to make a sickening melange. Ahead, he could see that the edges of the door had the characteristic discoloration of hurried welding.

"What," he muttered under his breath.

He tried to open the passageway into the KDY Not, but it wouldn't budge.

While he was outside of the interference plating built into the facility, no transmission would reach his superiors, and on the other side of the hastily sealed door, the bartender had the only hard line to the Overseer's office.

The thug swore; there was no choice but to go back downstairs.

The man set off at a trot, but as he passed through a particularly dark section of the tunnel, an eight inch knife held by an armored fist slammed into his throat, destroying his momentum and sweeping his legs out from under him.

The pirate hit the cold duracrete with a muted thump, and as he felt his life pouring out of his neck, another knife plunged deep into his chest, severing his aorta. His insides began to fill with blood, and as the attacker twisted the blade, its serrated edge caught on his ribcage.

The thug spasmed in pain, but the armor-clad hands holding him down would not budge.

As the light behind his eyes dimmed, the last thing the pirate saw was the Mandalorian's black visor hovering above his face.

The bounty hunter waited patiently for the man to finish twitching before he proceeded to hang the body on a particularly low-hanging pipe. Cairn didn't consider himself an unusually cruel man, and while a harsh attitude was often necessary in a career with as large a grey area as his, the message this thug's corpse was meant to leave would be clear: this gang, however highly they thought of themselves, would pay for capturing his partner.

XXX

With one unnoticed exception, Kar'tan's captors were not a very gentle folk. As they paraded the Mandalorian towards the other end of the facility, hands tied behind his back by a long strip of fibercord like a leash, he was repeatedly knocked around for their general amusement. A crowd had gathered to throw him back and forth; one side would hit him with rifle butts and the other would try to be tough and hit him with unarmored fists, though they quickly learned to stop hitting his chest and upper back plates, lest someone break a hand.

It was an understatement to say that the beating hurt, especially when they stopped to kick him any time he resisted, but Kar'tan had a suspicion that he would soon find the bottom of the little mystery he'd fallen into. He soldiered on through most of the pain, and even though his _Beskar_ dulled many of the sharpest blows, he had a small hope that after a while, the pirates would simply tire of beating the _osik_ out of him.

Following several particularly savage kicks, Kar'tan turned off his helmet's projection microphone; he needed to scream without giving his captors the pleasure of a reaction.

It was a long walk through the facility's second hangar. In the midst of his beatings, Kar'tan saw that this one was filled with yet more crates, and as they dragged him along the dividing wall, he noticed a small room in the west corner of the hangar. It looked for all the world like a secondary control station, but there was no way to be certain, not with the parade of thugs surrounding him.

Turning northward again, the gradually expanding procession reached the Overseer's office, and the small door led Kar'tan to believe that the room in question was simply a repurposed utility closet, but he was surprised to find stairs that climbed to a bizarrely well-furnished observation deck that could view the entire northern hangar.

A panoramic window, bordered by polished granite on three sides greeted Kar'tan's vision when his captors hauled him into the room; the walls were adorned with various expensive looking paintings and holo-dioramas. When he looked down, the Mandalorian could see a fine Cetagandan carpet beneath his feet; its iridescent piles formed intricate waves of color with his every footstep.

The thugs pushed Kar'tan to his knees and kept firm hands on his shoulders. He looked up, but could only see a large... _throne _facing away from him.

"Overseer, your intruder," Kar'tan heard the modulated growl again.

"Thank you Blair," said a familiar voice, "You are a credit to your profession."

The throne slowly turned away from the panoramic transparisteel window to revealSecurity Chief Aveus Bonari.

Kar'tan let off one last expletive before reactivating his projector.

"Well, hello Lieutenant," Kar'tan said with as much neutrality as he could manage; he was still aching from being knocked about in the hangar. "Funny seeing you here on this wonderful evening."

Bonari sat stiffly, not betraying any emotion in front of his "troops," an action befitting his status as an Imperial officer. "I believe, Mr. Venn, that in your pursuit of our good friend, Opus Crane, you've found yourself in completely the wrong place." Bonari did not smile, but his tone became smug. "It seems that Commander Karjeel and I have mistaken you and your currently absent partner for competent investigators. I know that _I'm_ going to regret having to inform the Commander that not only did Mr. Crane escape, but he killed the two men we'd set after him."

Kar'tan glared at the Security Chief-turned-pirate as a cold feeling flowed through his gut. Recognizing the subconscious warning, Kar'tan checked his visor for threats, only to find Crane, _and the damn Rodian_, standing just off to the right, trying to stay away from his field of view. The sight caused a small switch in his mind to flip, bringing him out of the numb state that the walk of pain had brought on; as his heart rate increased from the adrenaline flooding his veins, small details shot forward.

Far away from the observation deck, deep in the northern hangar, Kar'tan saw a small motor pool. Most of the vehicles were fairly indistinct at this distance, even with image magnification, but they all seemed to be military grade hardware. As his vision drifted closer to his immediate surroundings, Kar'tan realized that the room he had been escorted into was once a control station, now converted into a command center. Images present on several viewing boards showed a lively processing station, and the crates that he had been sneaking through were being loaded on to and off of trams with destinations unknown. The other terminals looked like they had accounting forms and duty rosters.

The pieces of the puzzle clicked together in Kar'tan's mind at last.

"You're running Kuat's Black Market," he growled.

"You are quite correct, bounty hunter," said Bonari, still smug, "This facility was abandoned at the end of the clone wars; its assets left to rot, its entrances destroyed. I rebuilt this place. I control the base above the surface and the base below it. I am the master of the black market. I am the Overseer."

"So the theft was all a sham," said Kar'tan, trying to get Bonari to outright state his involvement for the helmet recorders. "You arranged for Crane to be your face man while your_ lackeys_," he struggled against his captors, "stole everything from the vault."

"Yes," replied Bonari. He broke the facade of implacability to laugh at Kar'tan, "I arranged the theft of the entire armory to prove to these _lackeys_ that the Kuati Underground can take whatever it wants right from underneath Karjeel's nose."

"You've been shifting leads away from us," Kar'tan said, "My partner and I had to scrape the bottom of the barrel because of you."

The Overseer dropped his smug pretense for just a moment as he threw a glance at Crane and the rodian in the corner. "Yes, and it becomes a wonder that you still made it here."

"You can't hide from a Mandalorian on the scent," Kar'tan snarled.

Bonari rose from his throne. "Then it's time to put this Kath Hound out of its misery," he gestured to his thugs and smiled cruelly, "To The Pit."

XXX

Back in the southern hangar, the absent guards escorting Kar'tan had been replaced and augmented in anticipation of the next marauding bounty hunter. At the mercenary Blair's advice, several guards had begun patrolling between the pallet stacks in hopes of flushing Cairn out of cover.

In particular, two pirates stood watch at the hangar side of the entrance to the "Initiation Funnel."

Ever since this pair of thugs had signed on with the Kuati Underground, they had been stuck together to perform the most boring tasks. Between supervising the Overseer's precious motor pool, chaperoning the crate processing station, and cleaning the gang's refreshers, the guards had agreed that keeping watch over a single door with nothing else to keep them occupied was by far the most useless task they'd been told to perform.

Boring as the jobs were, there was always something to talk about, and between the two of them, Jenro started nearly every conversation. This time was no different.

"Dorian, do you think the bounty hunter'll come through here?" he asked abruptly.

The other guard took a moment to respond.

"I don't think he'll come through t'all," he said.

"Well, the other one got in, what's to make you think the second won't make it?"

"Isn't it obvious? He wasn't right behind his buddy," said Dorian, "He pro'bly scurried off when the escape booth shut."

The pair stood in silence for a few moments before Jenro spoke again.

"I hate that slide."

XXX

Fresh from his encounter with the now-dead rookie, Cairn approached the guarded hangar entrance in the shadow of a broken glowpanel. In between his random, and still fruitless, attempts to contact his partner, Cairn had been hearing snippets of radio traffic the entire time he'd been in the lower part of the tunnel; the pirates had been very busy since they had managed to catch Kar'tan. The bounty hunter slowed his pace to a stealthy prowl and drew a balanced throwing knife as he approached the entryway; he had to be on alert for potential attackers in every blind spot.

The sliding door at the end of the corridor was shut, but as Cairn drew nearer, the guards' conversation oozed in through the wall. " – tell ya, Three more months of this, and I'll be able to open that shop down on 5th avenue and Gry's Park," said one voice.

"So you' been saying," replied another voice. Cairn waited a moment to be sure no one else would join the conversation. "Though, the whole time we' been on duty together, you' never mentioned what you wanna sell."

"Now that ya ask, I 'aven't thought much about it," there was a pause, and Cairn was certain he heard scratching sounds. "Maybe I' sell whatever I can get hold of. You know, knick knacks and the lot."

The other voice began his reply as Cairn stopped actively listening; he had heard enough to determine that the guards were definitely alone. His hands moved automatically as he planned the kill. If this was going to be fast, all details had to be accounted for.

First, the opening before him was an exceedingly primitive design; like the others in the facility, it had to be pushed open manually. If he was going to succeed, Cairn had to be fast; the rickety door presented an obstacle that made stealth nearly impossible.

Worse, these pirates were likely armed, which would make speed absolutely necessary if he wanted to catch them off guard.

Furthermore, while his normal combat knives would work, Cairn knew he might have to improvise. Like Kar'tan, he possessed a pair of vibroknives in the upper part of his gauntlets. But where his partner's extended from the plating in his gloves, Cairn's blades emerged from the bulky bracer itself. The concealed weapons had an excellent slashing arc, but more importantly, they required less brute strength for hand to hand.

The guards outside stood and conversed casually; from their banter, Cairn imagined that they'd dealt with the dullness of guard duty before. He braced himself for the attack...

In a flash, the door slammed aside and he flowed out into the hangar, arms spread. As their heads turned in reaction to the noise, the guards met a pair of ten-inch vibroknives perfectly aimed to sever jugular veins and pierce vulnerable trachea.

The knives withdrew with a sound that was equal parts juicy slurp of pierced flesh and sharp rasp of metal on metal. The pair of hands they were attached to dropped slightly, grabbing the guards' tunics and dragging them into the dark passageway.

The door calmly shut in response.

XXX

"I don't care whether or not you catch the other Mandalorian, Overseer, but my work here is done." The mercenary's artificial voice was still completely neutral.

"It's a shame," said Bonari as he walked behind the group of men restraining Kar'tan. "With your experience at the forefront of this operation, the other bounty hunter would be of no consequence. Perhaps-"

"You want my advice? Don't. Underestimate. Mandalorians." Blair stopped walking. "This goodbye was a courtesy, not an opening for bargaining."

Bonari put his hand to his brow and turned to give orders to the men corralling Kar'tan.

The mercenary recognized the Imperial philosophy that made the Overseer more than confident in his numerical advantage, but as the war against the Rebellion had demonstrated, overwhelming force was useless if misapplied. Arguing about it would do nothing. Bonari was an Imperial Officer, right down to his stride. The man was set in his ways, and Blair was experienced enough to know when to cut out. More importantly, it was a mercenary's job to follow orders and get paid, not change their employers' perspectives on warfare.

By the time Bonari turned back to the obstinate mercenary, Blair had disappeared, concealed by the shadows in the poorly lit hangar.

XXX

Gleken Anders padded along at a cautious pace, holding a big flechette cannon in a death grip. The area's massive number of blind spots, compounded with the low light conditions this far from the hangar walls was making the man a nervous wreck. He had originally been patrolling along the pallet field's edges when the other bounty hunter had been caught, and when the squads had reconfigured, he'd been the first to volunteer for field duty. The bonus promised him by the Overseer had been so enticing, yet within minutes it had turned sour. Word had come down recently about the men stationed in the entrance tunnel. "Gutted," the squad leader said. "We're dealing with a real lunatic here."

The unprecedented threat of a psychotic bounty hunter had nearly everyone in the south hangar on edge; they knew that he was lurking here somewhere. Anders shifted his grip on the gun for what felt like the hundredth time as he approached another corner.

XXX

Cairn watched the nervous pirate's approach from a few rows away. While the man was managing to keep his frantic breathing quiet, the intense fear had his nose running and every now and then he snorted unconsciously.

_Crazy** chakaar's** going to blow one of his own team mates away if he keeps on like that, _ he thought, watching the man jump around a corner, gun first. The Mandalorian quietly climbed onto the stack he had been hiding behind. Cairn might have just let the guard do it if there wasn't the pressing issue of getting to his partner in time. Avoidance would take far too long.

The pirate slowly crept towards Cairn's pallet, quivering with fear and trying to stay in as much light as possible. The glowpanels on the walls didn't do much to illuminate the stacks this far from the edges of the hangar, especially with the rows haphazardly arranged. The deep shadows between adjacent pallet stacks could hide a Mandalorian like him all too well.

_Closer, closer..._ Cairn thought, steadying himself in a crouch; he felt a flow of energy through his body following the adrenaline that made him ice cold. The pirate was now nearly below him. Despite the tension in his muscles and the heat of the moment, Cairn couldn't help but wonder why the man hadn't bothered to look up, but the thought disappeared as he dropped onto the guard, right hand outstretched to grab the cannon, left hand holding a knife to deliver a killing blow. The noise gave the pirate a moment to look up, but he was too slow as Cairn's knees drove into his chest, slamming him into the ground with a muted thump.

The knife plunged into the pirate's collar as Cairn grabbed the Flechette Cannon to keep it from noisily clattering to the ground. The man remained pinned until the bounty hunter was certain that he'd completely bled out.

Now that the pirate was assuredly dead, and the adrenaline had faded from his body, Cairn took stock of his surroundings. No one had come running at the sound of gruesome death, this particular column of pallets was clear of obstructions and patrols, and he'd disposed of yet another guard, this one armed with something better than a cheap BlasTech.

"Very nice," Cairn muttered to himself as he checked the ammo counter on what he identified as a Golan Arms FC -1 Flechette Cannon. The gun was designed to shoot clusters of molten durasteel from its massive quad barrel and one shot could render any human and many non-humans fit for the morgue.

_It's full too_, he thought happily.

After heaving the bloody corpse onto one of the taller stacks, Cairn slung the FC–1 over his shoulder. Something this powerful would be handy when it came time to break his partner free.

XXX

"The Pit," as Bonari had so dramatically named it, was nothing more than a side room in the North Hangar's cafeteria. It had probably served as some sort of pantry, but, to Kar'tan, the scorch marks on the walls seemed more in line with interrogation and execution than fruits and vegetables.

As the group escorting him had thinned out to guard the entrances to the cafeteria and The Pit, Kar'tan had become more aggressive in his attempts to escape. Inside the small chamber, it was down to just Kar'tan, Bonari, and four thugs. His blasters had been confiscated, but Kar'tan had a few tricks up his sleeve, if only he could get loose.

"Mr. Venn, you'll need to cooperate if you expect to live beyond the next few hours," said the Overseer as his pirate thugs slammed Kar'tan onto a wooden chair. The two Zabrak holding his arms pushed his shoulders down while a human tried to remove his helmet. His bucket was locked from the inside, but the pirate pulled his hardest anyway.

During a momentary lull in the thug's attempts, Kar'tan drew his shoulders together, planted his feet, and head butted the man right in his solar plexus. The pirate staggered back while Kar'tan turned his body to pull free of the two Zabrak. One let go, but Kar'tan's efforts were immediately rewarded by a fierce kidney punch from the other human, followed by a double-fisted blow to the back of his head from the now unencumbered Zabrak.

After all of the torment that had been inflicted on him, this particularly hard impact stunned the brutalized Mandalorian. Kar'tan doubled over in pain, lights flashed in his eyes, and he slumped to the side, nearly unconscious from the shock.

"Come on, sit him down; take his jacket," one of the human thugs ordered. Kar'tan felt his arms moving as the duster was pulled off him and his leg-strapped knife removed; the pirates put his hands behind him, around the back of the chair, and tied him down. He unfortunately _didn't_ feel the durasteel cuffs through the haze in his head.

After several minutes, Kar'tan regained clarity of mind and looked up to find Bonari looming over him with an enormous grin on his face. Kar'tan was relieved to still be looking through his helmet; the thugs hadn't thought of a more creative way to release the lock in his collar that pinned it down.

"Welcome back," Bonari said smugly, "I hope you don't mind the adjustments we've made while you were out."

Kar'tan looked down. _Oh **shab**_, he thought. _That's a** bomb.**_


	8. The Bomb

Kar'tan took in every minute detail about the device; its chest mount made the task all too easy. The bomb was heavy and seemed to be a combination design, of the type used in precision demolitions. A digital readout on the top was set to 30 minutes, a ridiculous amount of time. Its very visible display led him to decide that this sort of thing was an interrogation tactic. The timer would count down while the victim watched, hopelessly alone, until he caved and answered the pirate's questions.

_Interesting,_ he thought. _ A real twisted** chakaar** had an idea like this._

Bonari interrupted Kar'tan's internalized analysis with a demeaning rap on his helmet. "Are you there, Mr. Venn? I'd love to chat with you about your partner, we're just dying to meet him." He smiled cruelly.

"What is there to say?" asked Kar'tan, stalling for time. Cairn was his oldest friend, and there was no doubt in Kar'tan's mind that his partner wouldn't stop fighting until they were reunited. "He's a real _Mando'ad_; chest-pounder, good in a fight, all that_ osik_."

"That's wonderful," said Bonari, who appeared to be getting ready to pry as much as he could from Kar'tan's unwilling conversation techniques. There was something in his eyes that Kar'tan could tell meant Cairn was closer than he'd previously imagined. The Overseer continued inquisitively, "But tell me, does he like games? Does he prefer Dejarik or Sabacc? Maybe just a bit of old fashion roulette?"

"Oh, ha ha," Kar'tan jeered. He was still a bit numb from his knock out, but training had ingrained in him methods for resisting interrogation. In the recesses of his mind, Kar'tan focused on the specifications and measurements of the ARC to dissuade any telepathic probes; his body relaxed to prepare for any more blows to his already bruised sides and face. "Cairn's not one to gamble with his money," he said, thinking of an old Mandalorian proverb, "No Mando is."

Annoyance crept into Bonari's voice as he continued. "Come on now, we're not so different," he signaled one of the Zabrak to move in closer, "You kill people for money, I kill them for money and power. We're both murders in more civilized places."

Behind his visor, Kar'tan scowled. He hated that comparison. Just because it was superficially accurate, the cutthroats that invariably made the connection expected it to mean something to him, as if they were part of some kind of brotherhood. What they didn't realize was that he was Mandalorian, part of his own clan, and they weren't.

"Now tell me, Mr. Venn, where is your partner? I do know about your little radios; that helmet can't fool me. You must know where he is!"

Bonari's claim stunned Kar'tan for a moment. The interference plating in the ceiling of the complex had cut him off so thoroughly earlier that the notion to keep attempting to contact his partner hadn't occurred to him since his initial landing at the bottom of the slide. He swore under his breath for having such idiotic tunnel vision.

"Damned if I know," said Kar'tan keeping his voice level. _ It's unlike Cairn to not call when he's incoming,_ he thought_. So the logical conclusion is –_

A bulky fist slammed into Kar'tan's helmet, hard.

Almost hard enough to give him a concussion, but the helmet protected him just enough to prevent further injury. Aside from the bruising he received with every blow, Kar'tan was certain he'd end up losing a tooth if they kept this up.

"Come on Mr. Venn, neither of us has all day," Bonari held up a small remote, "especially you."

"I don't know where he is," said Kar'tan, as he checked his comm unit for activity. It was dead; something must have come loose when he was captured; he would have to take his helmet off to re-connect it.

He looked back up at his captor as Bonari touched his earpiece.

"How much blood?" he asked the thug on the other end of the call. The Overseer cringed and pulled the piece out of his ear. After a few moments he replaced it. "Pull yourself together. Next time turn your comm off _before_ you puke."

Seeing a chance to antagonize his captors, Kar'tan decided to play off the implied carnage. "Having trouble with a_ single_ bounty hunter?" he asked snidely.

"Yes," replied the Overseer, "He's evading capture quite... creatively. It would be in your best interests if you just tell me what his plans are _before_ he kills more of my men."

"What makes you think that I'll help you?" Kar'tan asked jeeringly. His flippancy was rewarded with another blow to the head. This one was considerably weaker; the Zabrak thug was obviously hurting his hand with every hit.

Kar'tan could see that these men were unused to Mandalorian psychology, but if there was anything he could do to help Cairn, it would be to get them out of his partner's way. He could conceivably give them a decoy location to persuade them to leave the room, but it would take some convincing theatrics. The pirates would have to think they had broken him, and even if they were unfamiliar with interrogations and just what breaking a person actually entailed, they wouldn't be convinced if they never saw the pain behind his visor. 

_This is gonna hurt_ he thought as he egged the thug on. "Come on pretty boy, hit me, I can do this all day."

"I'll have you know, Mr. Venn, I can be _creative_ as well." Bonari said as he placed his boot on the bounty hunter's stomach. Kar'tan grinned; the man was making it just too easy. As the chair toppled backwards, he chinned his helmet release. The impact against the ground jarred him worse than the kick had, and his helmet bounced off the floor and rolled to a stop in the corner. Bonari motioned with his head, and the Zabrak thugs hauled him upright.

Kar'tan looked up at the face of the Overseer, Bonari, whatever he called himself. The intent was obvious in the man's eyes. This wasn't going to be creative at all. A beating was a beating whether it was done with fists and feet or heavier tools. Pain was simple. He readied himself to take a few shots before letting Bonari hear what he wanted.

XXX

Kar'tan coughed up three teeth onto his shoulder plate, following what could only be described as fifteen minutes of raw violence. "Okay, okay," he said in a panicked tone. Beyond the molars his head was now missing, blood was pouring from his both of his temples and his nose and cheeks had swelled beyond recognition.

He took a shuddering breath as though he was ready to give up and die, and Bonari raised his brows in interest. The Mandalorian took a moment to recall the parts of the complex he had seen; he needed a spot that sounded liker a logical destination.

"Look," Kar'tan coughed again. His face _hurt_. "There's one of him and two hundred of you. Do you think he's just going to keep waiting for you to overwhelm him? Cairn's a Mandalorian, he's going to find an equalizer. Something big and destructive-"

"Like a tank," finished Bonari.

"Yeah, that sounds right,"continued Kar'tan. The motor pool wasn't the spot farthest away from the The Pit, but it would have to do. "He'll find the toughest tank, and probably smash his way through every wall until he either finds me or kills you."

Bonari grabbed a blaster and pointed it at his captive's head. "You're certain?" he asked, deadly serious.

Kar'tan did his best to look finished. "It's what I'd do." he sighed.

Bonari looked convinced as he lowered the weapon and followed his thugs to the doorway. "Good, then it looks like all we need to do is tie up loose ends."

The Overseer pressed the button on his remote and closed the door.

XXX

The square-cut opening in the hangar wall loomed before Cairn as he determined his options. He could either go through the gap, as his gut suggested, or he could keep exploring the field of pallets until he either killed every pirate in the facility or they killed him.

_Yeah, sure, let's go with the second one,_ Cairn thought sarcastically as he edged around one of the stacks closest to the opening. There was no one directly in sight, but there was no guarantee that someone wasn't coming. He crept closer to the very limit of the pallet field, checking his visor constantly for guards in the nearby area.

The closer he got, the further his view expanded, but patrols were fairly sparse. Cairn would need a full view of the corridor to be sure, and as he began to move his helmet out from the row, he saw a group approaching from the left. They were at least 15 meters off, yet even at that distance, there was no way he could slip by unnoticed. Cairn withdrew into the shadow of the tallest stack he could find to wait for the guards to pass.

As they approached, Cairn silently climbed up the edge of the stack. When he leaned out to watch the patrol, the position would put his helmet above the pirate's normal line of sight, and the height advantage meant that anyone too curious could be debilitated quickly.

The patrolmen chatted and laughed as they passed, taking their time, but Cairn was patient.

_There they go_, he thought as he gingerly climbed down to the floor. A loud thump would not be very helpful with the patrol so close.

The bounty hunter crept back towards the opening in the wall. The way was now clear, and Cairn flew through the gap towards the less active northern hangar.

His journey through the wall separating the hangars was at least 10 meters. It was clear that whomever had carved the complex into solid granite had definitely built to last.

Wreathed in the shadow of the unlit passage, Cairn took a moment to gather bearings. To his left dwelled an abundance of clone wars -era vehicles ranging in size from a small BARC speeders to a formidable looking _Saber-_class fighter tank. At maximum magnification, Cairn could see that it was crawling with guards and laced with portable holocam mounts.

To the right stood another field of pallets. Like before, they sat in staggered rows and equally spaced, but this group had no glowpanels aimed at it. Most of the light seemed to be directed towards the high, white-painted ceiling. It created a diffused effect, but provided barely enough illumination to read by.

From his central vantage point, Cairn looked for any sign of where Kar'tan might have been taken. High on the right, what looked like some sort of control room with bulged-out transparisteel windows perched above the hangar like a watchful shriek-hawk's eye. It didn't appear active, and Cairn wondered if this half of the facility was unused except for storage, but when he looked to the far wall, his observations were rewarded with clear signs of hustle and bustle. Even with his distant view, Cairn could see several pirates in guard formation around a single door, with two more patrolling back and forth.

_Looks promising_, he thought, and his gut feeling agreed.

Moving to the right of the opening to take better advantage of the pallet field's cover, Cairn quickly and quietly advanced to the Northern-most wall of the facility.

XXX

To the east of Cairn's position, high in his observation perch, Overseer Bonari sat down in near total darkness, and he began clicking through the holocam feeds surrounding the motorpool. There was no sign of the Mandalorian on any of his viewscreens, every guard had checked in on time, and no vehicle had moved or been tampered with at all, much less since the bounty hunter in 'The Pit' had given him the information on how to catch his wayward partner. Bonari was determined to finish this wild bantha chase and continue on schedule; Mr. Venn's interruption alone had put his accounting behind by nearly half a day.

The Overseer rubbed his brow with his hands. He had to keep watching the footage until they caught the other one. _Its only a matter of time,_ Bonari thought hopefully.

XXX

_Well, there's the door..._ thought Cairn grimly as he reached the last pallet before the North wall. Given the force covering it, he had no doubt that this is where Kar'tan was being held. Ten meters to the northwest stood a quartet of guards, all keeping watch over the lone entryway. Four more pirates patrolled in pairs back and forth just away from pallets, covering a 50 meter long space in both directions along the northern wall of the complex. Creeping to the east apex of the thugs' patrol route, Cairn watched silently for several minutes as the teams of thugs policed the area. The pirates sweeping his side would be first on the chopping block, each pair reached the furthest point from the door on opposite ends consistently enough, and they walked with an air of extreme boredom, perfect targets to catch unawares.

Unfortunately, the group in the middle would be much harder to take down. All four guards stood with their backs to the aperture, covering the empty space in front of them with overlapping fields of fire. Cairn would have to either drop down from above the door, or dispose of them faster than what he believed he could manage. He sighed. _This is not going to go well. Where's Kar'tan's Shatter Pistol when you need it?_

With a faint rasp of metal on metal, Cairn pulled his twin combat knives from the angled mounts on his chest. He followed his first targets as they walked away from the light provided by the glowpanel above the guarded door.

As they reached roughly the middle of their eastern route, Cairn bolted from his cover. He covered the 3 meters to his targets faster than they could react, and plunged both of the 8 inch blades deep into the guards' collarbones, driving them inward to pierce major arteries and all but sever respiratory systems. They dropped with a muted thwack, but made no other sounds.

Cairn had little time to dawdle; he ran back into the pallet rows and then the remaining 20 meters back to his safe vantage point of the door. The other patrol would be returning soon, and he had to dispose of this group quickly and as quietly as possible. Using only blades was dangerous, but a blaster shootout was out of the question; Cairn took several deep breaths to focus himself as he drew his heaviest throwing knives.

The first blade flew through the air and buried itself to the hilt in the furthest guard's skull. The man fell with a whimper, and as the others turned to see what happened, Cairn threw two more. The knives sped through the air and sank deep into their targets.

Both pirates fell, grabbing for the blades in their backs.

The last man standing, unsure of where the attack was coming from, crouched into a firing position facing directly away from the door.

Cairn stepped from behind cover, his hand outstretched. Pumped full of adrenaline, the world seemed to slow to a crawl as he watched the guard turn to fire, only to look directly into the last knife as it burrowed into his right eye socket.

In another circumstance, Cairn would have gasped at the speed in which the pirates had fallen. Even going in, he wouldn't have trusted in his own accuracy at the rate he was forced to throw the heavy blades.

But now was not the time to stop. Two more guards approached, and the bounty hunter could make out their vague figures in the distance.

He rushed for the door.

Pushing it open slightly, Cairn saw that the adjacent area was not a full room, just a short hallway. Grateful for the hiding place, he took cover behind the door, leaving only a crack through which he could watch and wait for the last two pirates.

A minute passed. To Cairn, as adrenaline filled as he was, the time felt like hours, but the patrolling thugs appeared soon enough. Through the crack in the door, he saw the first one kneel down next to one of the dead guards. The other was just out of sight.

The Mandalorian emitted a low growl in irritation; he would have to adjust the opening even more to sight up the other pirate before he made a move. _Not much of a choice_, he thought. Carin nudged the door over a little further, praying that the primitive sliding mechanism wouldn't squeak.

_There!_ He stopped the door as the second thug came into view. The opening was now three centimeters wider, but he could finally strike with his usual precision. From a slot on his left hip, Cairn pulled two of his most balanced knives. The edges of the razor sharp blades glinted in the sliver of light streaming through his hiding place.

Outside, the the first pirate was checking each corpse for life while the second covered the dark hangar our from the door. _Amateurs,_ Cairn thought fleetingly, _They should be calling for backup, not just standing there with their heads up their backsides._

He noisily shoved the door aside. The pirates began to react, but Cairn had surprise on his side. The twin knives flew through the air, hitting their targets with perfect accuracy. The guard on the left collapsed on the floor with a knife in his chest; the other fell on him with the second blade embedded in his throat.

Cairn breathed a sigh of relief, he wasn't done, but it seemed that his hardest task was finished. Stepping out from the door, he checked to be sure that no other guards would be arriving anytime soon. Neither the pallet field nor the motor pool showed any signs of unusual activity. Keeping alert, Cairn policed the bodies around the opening for his knives and interesting kit, but these pirates weren't any better armed than most of the others he'd disposed of. He propped them against the wall, disconnected the light over the door, and made his way through the short hallway he'd been hiding in.

The opposite door in the hall was like all the others he'd encountered, but Cairn was still wary of guards. He crouched down to listen for a moment.

Hearing nothing, Cairn risked cracking the door open slightly to gain a vantage point into the next room.

The space behind the doorway was clearly a cafeteria of some sort, and Cairn could see at least six guards posted inside. Two Zabrak stood on either side of an innocuous door on the opposite wall, while the humans sat in various chairs eating or playing cards.

Lucky for Cairn, the commissary was several meters deep, meaning he would have an significant amount of time to find cover once he breached the door.

Cairn strained to see if there was anyone close to the opening that might give him trouble on his approach. There was no one in his field of view, but that didn't rule out any possibilities. Cairn retrieved his seldom-used blaster; there was no way he couldn't avoid a firefight in here, there were just too many guards.

_Here's where the fun begins, _he thought, and smashed the duraplast door aside. The pirates all looked up, but Cairn crouched low as he moved forward, braced a foot against the doorjamb, and launched himself onto the floor. Skidding towards the nearest table, Cairn quickly looked left and right for any more thugs. There were none, which made his next step all the smoother: grabbing the table he'd slid into, Cairn forced his side down, creating a makeshift wall between him and the -he recounted- _seven_ guards in place on the opposite end of the room.

The pirates, for all their faults, reacted quickly to the threat. In seconds, five tables were overturned in defensive positions around the guarded door and several blastershots rang out as they opened fire on the Mandalorian.

The durasteel table separating Cairn from red and green laser death started to warm from concentrated fire, but as he shot back, the bursts became slightly more sporadic.

Cairn adjusted his firing position left and right to try to throw the guards off, but he hadn't managed to hit any of them. There were just too many for him to fight effectively; he needed to either close to flechette range or create a massive distraction.

_This is the last time I go into the field without any spare grenades, _thought Cairn; he mentally kicked himself when he realized he'd come to rely on Kar'tan's ample supply of explosives just a bit too much. _Then again, we haven't been accidentally separated in a long while._ He shook his head at the excuse. _Still thoughtless._

Cairn was about to begin pushing his bit of cover towards his attackers when the he heard a loud **_CRACK_**. He looked up to see that the far door had been kicked flat; Kar'tan stood in the opening, bruised and bloodied, missing his duster and helmet, but no less ready to keep fighting.

The guards seemed to forget what they were doing, rising up to high kneeling positions around him, stunned to see that their prisoner had escaped. Cairn reacted quickly, he would not let them shoot his partner. Blaster in hand, he fired on all but the last human, who, now that Cairn had a good view of the pirate, was obviously wearing Kar'tan's missing duster.

The pirates fell to the ground, and Kar'tan cannoned into the last man standing, bowling him over, and kicked him repeatedly.

Panting, Kar'tan staggered a bit as he backed away from the bodies. "You really needed _my_ help against _seven_ guards!" he shouted.

Cairn smiled, the sarcasm meant that his partner was alright. "He was wearing your duster; I didn't think you would appreciate _another_ blaster hole!"


	9. The Distraction

With five minutes left on the timer, Kar'tan stepped over the baradium bomb and retrieved his helmet from the corner of the interrogation room. He adjusted its internal comlink and placed it back on his head with a familiar _clack._ Kar'tan sighed; he felt _safe_ again.

"So you're just going to let that thing go off." said Cairn, pointing at the rig that had been strapped to his partner's chest. "Are you sure they didn't hit you that hard?"

"Oh, ha ha," Kar'tan responded sarcastically as they walked out of the small room and into the cafeteria. "Look, Bonari probably has a timer on his person to remind him of when I'm supposed to die. He'll likely be waiting for an explosion to shake the dust off his hat."

He began searching the bodies for the rest of his kit, starting with the human that had stolen his duster. As Kar'tan finished with each corpse, he threw them into the interrogation room to let the bomb disintegrate them. "Besides, I'm not a miracle worker; I wouldn't be able to disarm it now anyway."

Cairn sat down on one of the chairs that hadn't been hit during the firefight. "Hold on a second, Bonari? You mean we were right the whole time?" he asked.

"Yes, it's all recorded." said Kar'tan, tapping his helmet as he spoke.

"How does a _chakaar_ like that stumble onto a place like this?" asked Cairn rhetorically.

Kar'tan stood up and replaced his E-11-A and SE-14r into their respective holsters. _That's everything,_ he thought as he tossed the last corpse into 'The Pit.' The bomb was nearly ready to go off, and the pair of bounty hunters had other things to attend to.

As the duo reached the cafeteria door, the room filled with a shrill beeping. The bomb was thirty seconds from exploding. Kar'tan slipped inside and closed the door behind his partner.

"Here it comes," said Kar'tan, grinning, as he watched Cairn hunch his shoulders forward, stick his elbows out, and mime putting fingers in his ears.

The beeping increased its pace as the bomb grew closer to detonation, culminating in a static tone that preceded a massive _**WHUMP.**_ The sliding door rattled a little from the pressure wave, but was otherwise unharmed.

"Well, that was easy," said Cairn as he checked the exterior of the commissary area for more guards. "But seriously, Bonari? You've got some explaining to do."

As the pair entered the hangar, Kar'tan started to describe all that had happened since his fall. Cairn filled in any gaps he could with what the bartender had told him while they took cover in the north hangar's pallet field. The relatively dark area would keep them hidden long enough to sort out the details and plan their next move.

"...and I told him to keep an eye on the motor pool, because that's what I'd do," he finished.

"That is what _you_ would do," Cairn responded, "and he was stupid enough to think I would be the same way?"

"What can I say?" Kar'tan shrugged, "People think Mandalorians are all the same."

"Must be our unique sense of chivalry," quipped Cairn, "But in all seriousness, do you have a plan, or is it my turn?"

Kar'tan thought for a moment, remembering what sort of men they were up against.

"To be honest, grabbing a tank would be a sufficient equalizer," he said, thinking out loud, "Now that there's two of us."

"Yeah, sure, except thanks to your misinformation, the motor pool is _crawling_ with guards," Cairn reminded his partner, "What we need is _another_ distraction."

A light went on in Kar'tan's mind as a small detail came back to him. "Exactly, and I have just the perfect place, come on!"

XXX

The muted thump of the interrogation bomb brought a small smile to Bonari's lips. _One down, one to go,_ he thought blissfully as he turned back to the holocam feeds. There was still no sign of the other Mandalorian, but it was no matter, his guards would catch the man soon enough.

Regardless, he would need to verify his first kill.

"Group A-45, report status of the prisoner." Bonari spoke into his comm unit with barely contained glee, but there was no response. "Group A-45, report!"

He sighed. _Now what?_

He tried a different channel. "Group A-47, go in the cafeteria and check on A-45. The idiots probably forgot to reset their comlinks when the bomb went off."

A-47 was stationed just outside the commissary, the limited range of a baradium bomb's comm scrambling abilities shouldn't have affected them, but again, Bonari received no response.

Stifling his worry, he called in one of the patrols much further away from the blast.

"Patrol G-11, this is Overseer, re-route to the cafeteria, Groups A-45 and 47 have yet to report in."

"Right away sir."

Bonari let out a sigh of relief after turning off his transmitter. At least someone was answering the comm; he made a mental note to start installing holocams inside the cafeteria and stop using baradium in the gang's explosives. He had loads of the stuff in his stockpile, but the electronic interference it generated whenever it detonated was beginning to wear on his patience.

_It should go for quite the price on Coruscant,_ he thought mirthfully.

XXX

"_Mar'e,_ I got it!" said Kar'tan as he pushed aside the door into what he had correctly identified as the secondary control center. He was greeted with row upon row of dusty computer panels and ancient viewscreens. Clearly this room hadn't been used since at least the Clone Wars.

"Took you long enough," jibed Cairn as he stepped in behind his partner. "I thought you were _good_ at breaking-and-entering."

Kar'tan made a rude gesture. "It's not my fault the locks are over 30 years old," he responded, "I had to bend three probes to get them to fit right."

Both Mandalorians took cover just out of sight from the transparisteel windows in the corners of the booth. Cairn kept watch on the south hangar's patrols. After lurking from one side of the complex to the other, he knew well enough that the southern hangar was much more active than its northern counterpart.

Kar'tan backed far into a dark corner and began examining the equipment in the shallow, but wide, control room. It was obvious from the start that much of this gear was manufactured in a wartime environment, and had been built to last. There were redundancies everywhere, a lot of them mechanical. None of it would catch fire easily.

_**Fierfek**_, he thought as he approached the east side of the room, _how am I going to get this distraction up and running without flammables?_

Momentarily confounded, Kar'tan began to pace along the rear wall when he noticed a section of duraplast that had begun to peel away with age. Hoping that there might be some flammable insulation behind it, Kar'tan finished pulling the piece back, but he did not find what he expected.

Behind the damaged panel was a large, rusted hatch.

"Well I'll be a monkey-lizard's uncle."

Across the room, Cairn tilted his head in confusion. "What?"

"Another hidden door," responded Kar'tan. He started pulling it open; the door had nearly frozen shut with rust, but after a few minutes of persuasion, it yielded. Behind the portal was an absolutely ancient ladder. Its rungs had decades of rust, but the passage itself was slim enough that Kar'tan could easily brace his weight on the walls.

"It's an escape hatch," he said, looking up the narrow tunnel. Kar'tan was deep enough that even with light enhancement and magnification, he couldn't make out any detail towards the top of the shaft.

"I bet I can get above the interference plate with this," said Kar'tan.

"Well, why don't you?" asked Cairn.

"You mean to call in the cavalry?" asked Kar'tan, "We don't know how to open the armory passage, and I doubt Karjeel's going to want to perform a hostile takeover on what he probably thinks is a legitimate business."

Cairn didn't respond for a moment.

"It wouldn't matter if he wanted to come in through the pub anyway," he said, "I welded the main door after I figured out how to open it."

"Oh," said Kar'tan, killing the conversation.

_Well, that's one problem solved_, he thought. _Still, we need some sort of plan if we're going to make it out alive._ Kar'tan relaxed against the hidden ladder as he began to mentally reconstruct the facility based on what he remembered. _One entrance from the armory, that we know about; two h__angar doors, a one-way entrance from the KDY not, this escape tunnel, a motor pool, military-grade armaments,_ he thought, absentmindedly ejecting and retracting his right gauntlet blade._ How can I fit it all together?_

Several minutes passed, and Kar'tan watched as his partner shifted his posture to be more comfortable in front of the window.

At that moment, a random idea sprang into Kar'tan's mind. He recalled his father's teachings about Mandalore the Ultimate. One of those all-important history lessons that had the tendency to stick only because of its explicit violence. _Te Ani'la Mand'alor, _as he was known, started the Mandalorian wars of ancient times, and elements of his battle strategy were still used in the modern age. "Cut off his movements, terrorize him at every step, and the enemy will go only _forward _to his doom," Kar'tan's father had recited. The deep psychology of the statement was lost on a five-year-old Kar'tan, but its application was perfect for their current problem: Force Bonari into the hands of the authorities by making that road seem the most likely to incur success.

"Perfect," Kar'tan said out loud. "I've got our plan."

"Good," groaned Cairn, "My backside's starting to cramp from waiting."

"I'm going to head up top to give Karjeel our SitRep." continued Kar'tan, oblivious to his partners invectives. "When I come back, we're gonna give Bonari and his thugs the biggest beating of their lives."

XXX

Kar'tan held position on the ladder for a moment to recollect himself. The injuries he'd suffered during his capture would heal, but after climbing what felt like 6 stories through a cramped passage, he needed time to rest his sore organs.

There wasn't much further to go, and the payoff of this long climb would be worth it if he could get in contact with Colonel Karjeel. Hopefully his evidence, and some well placed persuasion, would be enough to convince the old soldier to take action.

Another few minutes passed as Kar'tan climbed before he stopped again to look up. This time, the end was a mere two meters above him. The tunnel at this end was blocked by ferrocrete bricks reinforced with durasteel beams, but Kar'tan was sure that he was far enough above the interference plate to connect with the Stormtrooper Barracks.

He opened a channel on one of the standard Imperial frequencies. "Freelancer Kar'tan Venn under contract F-612S to Port 17 Ground Barracks, do you read? Port 17 Ground Barracks, this is Freelancer Kar'tan Venn, please respond."

After a tense moment, his comm crackled, "Freelancer Venn, this is Ensign Derrick, number CL-637, at Base E-2847, go ahead."

Kar'tan breathed a sigh of relief; he was over the interference plate, and the operator on the other end was willing to cooperate.

"I need to relay important information about my investigation to Colonel Horatio Karjeel. Is he available?"

The communications officer was silent for several moments. Kar'tan waited patiently; the ensign hadn't outright rejected his query, and the man was likely checking to be sure that the contract paperwork matched their rosters.

"I have your credentials, Bounty Hunter Venn," said Ensign Derrick, "relaying your call now."

"Copy that," Kar'tan replied.

He listened to the busy tone as he stood on the ladder. It wasn't the most comfortable place to be, but Kar'tan kept thinking about how much worse the situation could have been.

_If I'd been just a bit less lucky today, Cairn would be scooping me up with a vacuum. _His shoulders twitched involuntarily at the memory of the bomb that had been strapped to his chest. He broke out of his internal ramblings when he heard a soft _click_ from the opposite end of the line. Karjeel's authoritative voice boomed through his helmet speakers. "Good evening, Mr. Venn. Do you have the whereabouts of Opus Crane?"

Kar'tan did his best to break the news smoothly. "Colonel, I have some good news and some bad news."

"Proceed."

"Well," Kar'tan thought of the best way to break the news, and decided that backing up his claims would be easiest, "The bad news is that Lieutenant Bonari is fully responsible for your security breach. I'm uploading a data packet to you now, and I advise you sit down."

Kar'tan sent his recordings of the entire conversation with the Security Chief, from his dramatic entrance on the throne all the way to the bit about dirty jobs. He calculated that Karjeel would take approximately three minutes to view the complete data packet.

The Colonel did not respond for nearly ten. When he finally spoke, Kar'tan nearly slipped off his perch on the ladder.

"It was never like this in the field," said Karjeel. He stopped to draw a deep breath before continuing, his tone growing more sullen and even... nostalgic. "Out there, against the enemy, a commander could _rely_ on his men. That they would do their duty without question was the only way the men thought. Here, in this gilded cage, it's so easy to be led astray by those who would hide behind their experience, those men that say they can help me _adjust._"

"Sir," Kar'tan interrupted. Clearly his disgust with the position was something the old Colonel wrestled with daily, but both Kar'tan and Karjeel had to focus on their duty.

"Sir, we can set this right," Kar'tan paused to let the statement sink in. Maybe he could inspire the Colonel into action. "My partner and I have a plan; the facility where the traitor and his band of thugs has set up shop in is an old secret projects hangar of some kind. The complex possesses at least four entrances that they have been using to commit their crimes: a concealed door in the south wall of your Armory, two large -probably camouflaged- entrances to the east, and a hidden tunnel located in the back room of a pub known as the KDY Not. Cairn has already welded the passage from the pub, and we believe that with the correct application of terror, and some well placed explosives, we can force the traitor and his gang to you."

Karjeel spoke again.

"Your people have quite the reputation: carnage, firepower, brutality, dominating will, impenetrable defense," said the Colonel, fire seemed to be spreading through him as he spoke the words. "Your plan is bold, perhaps overly so. There will be too many men, even for a Mandalorian, though I doubt that even I could change your mind."

The bounty hunter smirked, "Not a chance Colonel. "

"Then I'll have my men ready. Drive the traitor to us and we'll finish the job." Kar'tan smiled as he heard a new fervor creeping into the old soldier's tone.

"Sir, yes sir!" He said, getting caught up in the command in Karjeel's voice. Kar'tan, professional soldier and mechanic, suppressed a subconscious urge to salute the ladder in front of him, but he meant every word.

Still, there was a remaining issue to cover before he could climb down.

"Sir, one last detail. I don't know the extent of the traitor's intelligence network, but our investigation has led us to believe that no stormtrooper is directly involved with him. I cannot say the same for the civilian crews."

"Understood, Mr. Venn," responded Colonel Karjeel, "I will lead my chargepersonally, and we will be _very precise_"

XXX

"Sir, there seems to be a lot of blood outside," said the pirate over the comm, "And no trace of the prisoner in here."

Bonari clasped his head in his hands. _Wonderful, _he thought, _**15 more**__ men dead, __**none**__ of them where that bounty hunter said his partner would be, __**and**__ I have no idea whether or not he escaped the bomb._

He forced himself to respond, "Is there any sign of his equipment?" If the man had died, and his partner had killed the guards, the confiscated equipment would still be in the room somewhere.

"No sir, and no sign of the men you put here to look after him." The pirate sounded confused, mirroring Bonari's own bafflement. He had no idea if his men inside had been killed before the bomb detonated and tossed in, or if they had stupidly thought they could disarm the explosives -without telling him- in an attempt to save themselves.

_This is madness,_ he thought. _What sort of lunatic could deter, much less __**kill**__, seven of my best men?_

"Keep looking," spat Bonari, "There has to be a clue that _one_ of you can pick out from the scrap pile!"

XXX

Cairn sat in the control room, watching the guards move past without even looking in his direction. In this lax period, he felt his adrenaline ebb away and the stresses, physical and mental, of all the running, hiding, and killing flood back to him.

As a Mandalorian, he'd been trained to fight, win, and kill from before he was eight years old; it was part of his culture, and Cairn didn't have a reason to question it. Over the years, his parents had encouraged him to learn other skills, things he had talents for, like agriculture and hunting, but combat and survival had always been most important. _If you won't fight, kill, or die to defend your own, then you don't deserve any of them,_ his father had said during training, _but I know you will, because you're__** my son**_.

Still, the human body could only take so much. Cairn wasn't anywhere close to his usual limits, but when combat was part of an almost daily routine, the need to stop and take a deep breath periodically was high on the list of priorities.

He leaned further back into shadow and closed his eyes. In the confines of his helmet, Cairn steadied his breathing and let the stillness of the room creep into his body. His heart slowed, his muscles relaxed, and the world seemed to just float around him.

After taking several, long, slow breaths, Cairn opened his eyes again. On his chrono, 5 minutes had slipped by, and when he looked out the window again, he saw that another patrol was passing by in the south hangar.

Now relaxed, Cairn shifted his legs to reach a more comfortable sitting position.

Almost as if on cue, he heard the sound of heavy boots from the rear of the booth.

Kar'tan jumped the last meter to the bottom of the escape hatch; from Cairn's view, his partner's stride seemed a bit lighter, as if the man had just had a cup of Caf, prompting him to ask, "Have a good chat with our employer?"

"You might say that," said Kar'tan as he peeked around the edge of the north window, "I shared with him all the juicy details, and it seemed like some fire had come back when I told him our plan."

"So he got excited about waiting for us to send his traitorous lieutenant up the chute so he could shoot him down?" Cairn asked with a touch of sarcasm.

"What can I say? Vengeance is cathartic," replied Kar'tan, ignoring his partner's baiting, "Though to be honest, I think this has gotten a little symbolic for the old man."

"Whatever," returned Cairn.

He had been sitting for what felt like ages, and even with the time for a good rest, he was starting to get bored. "These guards must be blind and deaf. I've been here for," he checked his chrono, "half an hour, and they haven't even _considered_ looking this way."

"How regular are the patrols?" asked Kar'tan.

"About once every five minutes on the south side, once every fifteen on the north." He paused to check his chrono again, "Both sides should be here in about 4." Cairn looked back at his partner, "why?"

Kar'tan pulled a double-fist sized wad of detonite from his pockets, a lump that must have been at least a three quarters of his supply. Between the two of them, Kar'tan was the demolitions specialist, but Cairn knew that a nugget of high grade detonite _that_ big could level a building.

"A distraction," he said with a shrug.

XXX

A resounding _**BOOM**_ shook the consoles surrounding the Overseer. He looked up from his security center as the vibrations died down. _What in Coruscant's black sky was that?_ he thought worryingly.

"Overseer to all points. What was that explosion?" Bonari waited for some sort of report to come in while he ran to the observation window. The detonation had been close; there was an excellent chance he'd be able to see the damage from up here.

He glanced over the entire hangar, and his eyes came to rest on the wall between the north and south halves of the facility. In the easternmost corner, nearly out of his field of view, a massive plume of smoke was crawling out of an enormous crater in the wall. The pallets nearby had all fallen over, and even at this distance, the Overseer could see his troops moving in to clear to area and put out fires.

A response finally came over the radio, "-some kind of explosion." There was a bout of what sounded like heavy breathing. "-came from the secondary control room. I thought-" Several incoherent shouts cut over the line. "Definitely not one of ours, sir."

The Overseer looked at his console, but his holocam network showed nothing. He sighed before contacting his team leaders with forced composure, "Rally the men, and put double forces on the delivery station once you've secured the fire and assessed damages." Bonari's heart sank. It was clear now that Mr. Venn had lied, even after they'd broken into his armor; in all likelyhood, he'd taken the knowledge of his partner's whereabouts to his grave.

_I have no idea how to handle__ this,_ he thought dejectedly, _Tracyn is completely unpredictable._

A voice crackled onto the radio, "-Sir, there's not much left here, no fires, and there's no sign of the groups stationed in this sector."

"How many men?" Bonari asked, dreading the answer.

"I count twelve missing, on top of those dead already," the gang member hesitated, "I think that's... 31 in all, sir."

XXX

The crimson and white _Saber_-class TX-130S sat calmly in the glowpanel light, and from Kar'tan's position, it looked as pristine as the day it had hovered off of Rothana Heavy Engineering's assembly lines. A pirate passed into the line of sight, and the pair of bounty hunters ducked back into cover between the 'wings' of a positively ancient _Vulture-_class droid starfighter.

"Come on, we can take him," said Cairn

Since their little 'distraction' 20 minutes ago, the pair had been covertly making their way back to the motor pool, and it was clear that the bomb had fulfilled its intended purpose. The area was now staffed by only two guards, and there was no better chance to run for the vehicle than now.

"Just a few more seconds," responded Kar'tan, "I'd like to be _in _the tank before we start a firefight."

He poked his head out again; the pirate was walking in the opposite direction.

"Now or never," he said, and the pair of Mandalorians vaulted the starfighter's wing and dashed for the tank. Kar'tan covered the 20 meters at a dead run and leapt onto the vehicle's left repulsorlift 'pontoon' so that he could climb to the upper hatch. Cairn slowed early and withdrew his pilfered FC-1. As Kar'tan began working on the locked hatch, his partner patrolled around the vehicle. It wouldn't do to have a guard sneak up on _them._

Being of a more modern design, the small padlock securing the hatch was, thankfully, less difficult than the one on the control booth's door, and Kar'tan had the lid open in under a minute.

"I'm in," he said to Cairn as he dropped into the open hatch. Standing in the gunner's position, the majority of his body was well above the tank. "I should be able to light this up in no time!"

Cairn began climbing towards the upper hatch when Kar'tan heard the distinct click-and-whine of a blaster being primed. He instinctively ducked just before a voice rang out.

"You!" shouted what could only be the other guard. He must have just come around the corner as Cairn had turned to get on the TX-130. "Get off there! That's property of the Kuati Underground!"

Cairn, who had his back to the pirate, slowly raised his hands and turned to face the man. His flechette cannon dangled on its sling in front of his chest.

Kar'tan didn't dare move a muscle, lest he startle the guard. While his partner had high survival odds against the poorly trained thug and his cheap BlasTech, neither Mando _wanted_ to get shot at today.

Then, out of of nowhere, Cairn brought his hands forward and together in a pleading gesture and affected a childlike tone, "I just wanted to take it out for a test drive; I'll bring it right back, honest!"

"What?" the pirate asked as he lowered his weapon in utter bewilderment.

Kar'tan saw the genius in the impromptu ploy as Cairn snatched the FC-1 from his chest before the guard could react and put a single round into him. One was enough, as a spray of metal shot out of the quad barrel of the weapon, tearing into the man's flesh like a rock through wet flimsi.

Cairn quickly turned away and began climbing up the tank towards the upper hatch. Neither man said anything at first, but Kar'tan couldn't contain himself. "Where did _that _come from?" he asked, nearly laughing at the absurdity of what he had just witnessed.

"I figured he'd want to know that we were going to bring it back," replied Cairn with a shrug.


	10. The Tank

Overseer Bonari looked up as his observation window shattered in an eruption of transparisteel, dust, and electric blue light. Massive shards of the broken window rained down into the hangar, and as he looked out, he could see a distant crimson and white shape move away from the motor pool, accompanied by the low rumble of repulsors.

He stood, dumbstruck, as an armored _vehicle,_ moved south to the dividing wall and then skirted the motor pool, heading towards the hangar's door on the west end. More blue light streaked towards the upper corner of the massive door; where its massive chain-drive opener sat. The motor erupted in a brilliant flash of orange fire as the shots slammed home; a thundering double-shockwave from the impact reached his ears.

The Overseer staggered back to his holocam station, grabbing the back of his chair for balance. He sat down heavily and pressed the comm unit in his ear. "All stations, full alert, there's an armored intercept vehicle loose in Hangar Two. I repeat, all stations, full alert, front arms in Hangar Two." He spat out the order in a rush. The shock was still staggering, and with it, his blood was beginning to boil. _**Not **here,** not** now, **not** in my facility,_ he thought.

There was nothing more that he could do except wait for his guard's responses. He looked over the various feeds into his security console. There must have been some clue that he'd overlooked since the old control booth went up in flames, something that would tell him what was going on.

As Bonari clicked through the recordings of the previous half hour, he saw a TX-130S heave itself from its resting place and lumber away, leaving a mangled corpse in its wake. He rewound the footage.

_There!_ he thought as he watched a miniature Mandalorian climb into the tank's upper hatch, while another pumped flechette rounds into one of his men. Seething in pure rage, the Overseer screamed out loud, "The _two_ bounty hunters, _alive_? "

He keyed his comm again, "All units, there are two Mandalorians running free in the facility. They are in possession of a _Saber_-class assault tank. Subdue them immediately and return the vehicle to me!"

XXX

"_Kandosii, ner vod! _Nice shot!" shouted Cairn from his perch atop the _Saber_; he pumped his arm in the air in triumph. The motor on the hangar door went up in a pall of smoke and flame, and it seemed like, for the first time since they'd taken this job, everything was going smoothly. Cairn quickly settled down; this was not the time to drop his guard.

The area ahead of the vehicle was clear, so he twisted the antipersonnel turret around to cover the path they were clearing. No one was following them yet, but he was going to need to keep a watchful eye.

Kar'tan called up from the cockpit as the tank began heading towards the gap in the dividing wall. "That's one door down, one more to go!" he said, his voice brimming with excitement. "By the way, try not to shoot too much of the ordinance lying around."

Cairn blinked a few times as he comprehended the statement, "Wait, wait, wait... You _don't_ want wanton destruction?" he asked, astounded, "Are you _sure_ they didn't hit you that hard? Because that's the second time today that I've had cause to doubt your sanity."

"Salvage,"Kar'tan responded.

Then it hit Cairn: the majority of the equipment surrounding them was not the property of the Empire, at least not directly; even their tank had Old Republic badges all over it. Clearly Kar'tan figured that they would be in an excellent position to lay claim on it when Bonari "passed away."

"_Ori'jate, Ner Vod._ Fantastic," Cairn said quietly.

XXX

Hugging the east wall, the tank passed the motor pool again. A contingent of about thirty pirates scrambled into formation in its path. Stupidly, none of them were packing any sort of heavy weapons, but they stood as though they had nothing to fear. Kar'tan smirked at the prospect of running them over, but out of of a desire to keep the tank away from potential land mines, he slowed to a stop.

He was close enough to see some of the stupid grins on the pirates faces. His smile increased as he aimed the main cannons at the floor in front of him.

Electric blue light splashed all over, and where it impacted, small, molten orange craters opened up in the stone floor, Kar'tan kept firing until the ground was so pockmarked that it looked like the surface of a small moon; several times there was a small eruption as an EMP mine went off. After the barrage, he brought the main cannon back to bear on the pirates and edged the tank forward. The thugs scattered; this part of the floor was now definitely mine-free.

As the TX-130 started moving again, Kar'tan saw a continuous blue beam shoot out from above him, catching various pirates in what could be described as the most efficient mop-up in all of history. When the pillar of blinding light touched a gang member, nearly all of his flesh seemed to evaporate, leaving a grilled skeleton in place of the fleeing thug.

Kar'tan keyed his comm, "Having fun are we?"

"I hardly even need to bloody aim," Cairn replied,

"_Yes_, you do." Kar'tan reprimanded, "Salvage,_ don't hit_ the salvage."

"Sorry, forgot about that." Despite the apology, Kar'tan could tell that his partner was smiling at the "wanton destruction" the cannon was causing.

Out in the open, many of the pirates had failed to find cover before they were vaporized, but the few that did would not likely be making a return appearance.

As the _Saber_ approached the north hangar's pallet field, Kar'tan slowed and turned on all of the tank's forward illumination; the pirates may have been stupid enough to mount a frontal assault, but he wasn't taking the chance that one of them would have the luck to place a mine in the one place he was hesitant to open fire, right next to the stored equipment. Despite his precautions, Kar'tan's visibility was limited by the vehicle's minuscule windows, and there was no telling if the available sensors could pick up devices potentially 20 years more advanced.

"Cairn, we need eyes up front," he said calmly, "I'd rather not run into any mines in this narrow corridor."

"Affirmative," responded Cairn as he swiveled the upper turret forward with a mechanical whir. A pair of eyes inside a Mando helmet would more than make up for out-of-date sensors.

The gap in the wall loomed, and Kar'tan could see through the forward ports that while it was certainly wide enough to accommodate the tank, there might be an issue with height. Having no choice but to press on, he dialed down the repulsors in an attempt to fit.

The _Saber_-class sank nearly half a meter, and Cairn called from the beam turret, "You're fine, just a little more."

The dampened repulsors slowed the craft to a crawl, and as Kar'tan turned them down even more, he began to hear a low scraping noise from the underside of the tank. Cairn sounded optimistic, but he did have a better view, "Perfect. Keep like this and we'll be fine."

Kar'tan winced as the grinding noise continued; it wasn't like he was worried about resale value, but the Mandalorian didn't want to damage an already vulnerable area of their armored transport.

The tunnel was, thankfully, very short, and as they cleared the gap and rumbled into the south hangar, Kar'tan revved the repulsor units back up to full power. He heard the same mechanical whir as Cairn perform a full sweep in the turret.

"No contacts," he said calmly.

Kar'tan breathed a sigh of relief; resistance had been minimal thus far, and while he knew that their luck was likely to change for the worse, Kar'tan took the time to enjoy the momentary feeling of invincibility that the tank provided.

XXX

Bonari dithered in his decision-making.

He had never been in combat, and his post on Kuat, combined with his clandestine duties as Overseer, had made him complacent in the familiar, day-to-day minutia of a relatively peaceful planet. Worse, his masterminding of the raid on the Imperial armory had built his confidence to a point of arrogance. When the two Mandalorians had thrown themselves into the mix, single-minded in their efforts to capture his patsy, Opus Crane, they had operated completely out of his normal thought parameters.

Someone would need to be blamed for this travesty, and as Bonari watched the holo-footage of the rogue tank and planned his next move, he thought of the man who had summoned the bounty hunters in the first place, summoned them_ against_ his advice...

_Karjeel__,_ he thought venomously, _He knows. The old bastard set me up with these psychos. They must have had secret orders, somehow he got past me._

It was clear to him now; if his operation was to continue unhindered, he would have to dispose of Karjeel and all of those loyal to him. When the dust settled, he could make up his own story and be put back in power, with or without a doddering old fool "administering" above him.

Bonari stood up from his chair, and keyed the comm board for his entire operation.

"All squads, this is The Overseer. Groups Aurek-1 through Grek-14, converge on the stolen vehicle in south hangar, grid C-1. Destroy it if necessary. Use everything at your disposal." Bonari shuddered with anger as he said the words. The blasted mercenaries were making him pulverize a priceless antique to get to them.

"Groups Grek-15 through Krill-7, assemble on my position, we have business to take care of on the surface."

The orders would split his forces more-or-less evenly, of the two hundred men he had started with, one hundred and forty remained; Bonari was certain that seventy men armed with the required heavy weapons could easily destroy one clone wars-era tank.

XXX

Heavy blaster fire pelted the front, rear, and sides of the vehicle, and as it surged forward, Cairn wondered how mad his partner had become.

"You _do_ realize that I'm exposed up here, _don't you?_" he shouted indignantly as the explosion from a grenade rocked the vehicle. With only partial cover, Cairn was forced to crouch down, and the actuators for the antipersonnel turret wouldn't work if he wasn't standing. All he could do was fire somewhat blindly forward, hoping that one of the thugs wouldn't get a lucky grenade toss into the hatch, killing them both.

"Sorry, but I don't have much of a choice," replied Kar'tan as he wrestled with the tank's controls in between shots with the main guns. It floated higher, causing the repulsors to whine with the added strain. "I'm having enough trouble trying to maneuver in this cramped space. If we don't get torn up by a mine, I might be able to bring us around and get you out of trouble."

"No offense, but I've got a better idea," said Cairn as he grabbed his FC-1. The flechette cannon would hopefully force the thugs to keep their heads down long enough for him to bring the beam turret, and its gunner shield, to bear. He lifted his visor just above the surface of the hatch and put the quad barrel of the metal-spewing weapon on the lip of the opening. A few pirates stood in sight, and Cairn began pouring fire onto their positions. The thugs that weren't torn to shreds by the super-heated chunks of durasteel quickly moved into cover behind the pallet stacks, and the volume of heavy blasterfire decreased drastically, enough that Cairn risked standing a bit taller.

He had a moment to rotate the gun, and as the bounty hunter moved his turret left to begin firing, it became clear that most of the opposing force had been passed by, and his main threats were from the rear. Cairn took care to avoid hitting the stacks, and the beam cannon dispatched at least half a dozen thugs before the rest ducked further into cover.

The tank hovered out from behind the pallet field and into the more open area around the processing station. The vehicle sank from its abnormally high plane, its anti-grav units calming, but Cairn couldn't help noticing a severe list to the left.

"Kar'tan...?"

"That detonation must have damaged one of the repulsors," Kar'tan replied as the tank scraped the floor, sending them veering into a stray pallet stack. Crates scattered hither and yon across the floor. "I'm trying to compensate."

As the vehicle righted itself, Cairn sighed in relief and took a moment to survey the crate-processing station.

The pallets in this area were much more loosely packed; most of the gaps were wide enough for the _Saber_-class to travel through easily. In between the wide rows, several three-meter-tall load-lifters were hard at work moving various separated crates on to and off of the automated trams surrounding the facility. The vaguely humanoid machines would carefully lift a crate from a pallet stack and delicately place it on a cargo tram in a predetermined pattern. The haulers themselves were only two meters wide, but each lead car pulled several nine meter long trailers behind it. Once they reached maximum weight, the trams slowly lumbered off towards the narrow opening at the west end of the hangar. Cairn suspected that some of Bonari's men waited at the other end of the entrance tunnel to check manifests and oversee the loading of cargo onto inter-system shuttles, but there was a distinct lack of human workers on this end of the supply line. He guessed that the entire detachment of pirates in this hangar had taken cover in the denser pallet field. It was understandable, given the bounty hunter's presence in the tank, but it still struck Cairn as strange that no one had stayed to protect the processing station.

_Perhaps they're under-trained** and **__under-paid_, he thought.

The armored vehicle cautiously hovered around the entire depot, giving the Mandalorians a chance to check for stragglers, before delicately maneuvering past one of the more active load-lifters; at the end of the circuit, Kar'tan's voice came over the comm.

"We need to block the door," he said evenly as the vehicle slowed to a stop near a group of unsorted crates, "I was thinking explosives."

"That's your solution to everything," said Cairn sarcastically. He took a sharp breath as an idea came to him, "It looks like those automated trams might be easy enough to hijack, how about we jam one or two into the opening?"

"Fair enough, but it probably won't be enough without some demo on top of it," replied Kar'tan, and Cairn could just hear the mischievous grin in his voice, "just so that it can't move."

"Fine," he said, clasping his head in his hands, silently laughing at his partner's need to make things explode, "but I'm sure you're nearly out of detonite by now."

Kar'tan paused for a moment.

"Take over driving for a minute," he said. "I need to make a stop for groceries."

XXX

Kar'tan watched as the blaster-scored tank floated awkwardly away, banging into several crates and a load-lifter as it made a path back to the corridor along the north edge of the pallet field. He winced as Cairn put a deep gouge in the north wall, and as the vehicle disappeared from sight, he turned to check the stacks beside him for provisions.

Most of the kit was locked into clone-wars era ordinance crates that could withstand light cannon fire and most projectile damage without incident. The first few packs were marked with symbols for automated blaster turrets, survival gear, and even capital ship-sized tibanna shells, but as enticing as all this paraphernalia was, Kar'tan needed _professional demolitions_ equipment.

He searched for nearly ten minutes, and while the distinct twangs of heavy blaster fire and deeper booms of the TX-130's side-mounted cannons stayed fairly quiet, Kar'tan could hear that the shots were getting closer to his position. Cairn must have been drawing the pirates further west, something that wouldn't have happened if he had been carrying a gunner.

_Doesn't matter, _Kar'tan thought. _I'll have the kit we need soon enough._

He pulled open a crate marked "DDC-15/41," and inside sat exactly what the bomb-happy Mando needed: Deuterium-Detonite Compound, otherwise known as "Rock-Cracker." Kar'tan grinned at the green bricks of explosive as he pulled them from the crate and stuffed nine of them into his pockets. Two would have been more than enough, but there was no shame in being prepared. _P is for plenty_, he remembered from training.

Kar'tan keyed his comm. "Cairn, I've found our groceries, come on back."

Cairn's reply was fraught with frustration. "I'll be right there; how did you manage to maneuver this _shabla_ thing?"

"Take it easy," said Kar'tan, trying to placate his partner, "I'll walk to the edge of the field so we can do a quick change-over."

Avoiding the ungainly 3 meter tall load-lifters, he began a brisk run towards where the tank had turned along the wall. It wasn't far, but as he reached the edge of the pallet field, he heard the all-to-distinct whine of a blaster being primed.

Kar'tan turned to face his attacker, but only saw a bright red flash.

XXX

Cairn wrestled with the tank's controls; the damaged repulsor bank kept forcing him to awkwardly correct a list to the left, but he finally managed to put a crater where the last visible thug had been standing. With no other attackers in sight, he began reversing the vehicle back to where he had left his partner, but as he reached the western edge of the field, the tank's instruments failed to spot any humanoid figures.

Concerned, Cairn checked his comm. "Kar'tan, what's your 20?"

It crackled for a moment before a response came, "*shhhk*-re in a second."

"You're breaking up," said Cairn, confused that there would be comm trouble when his partner should be within a few meters. "Repeat your last transmission."

Kar'tan's irritated voice came over clearly this time, "_I'm right __here._ Open up."

Cairn stopped the tank and extricated himself from the crash couch. The hatch over the gunner's position could be locked from the inside, and as he lifted the lid and looked out, he saw Kar'tan climb up onto the side of the vehicle's hull.

Cairn's partner appeared no worse for the wear, but there was a rather hideous set of bloodspatter covering his side. The duster's right sleeve was stained the worst, and Cairn could see that more blood was leaking from that arm's vibroknife glove.

"What happened to you?" he asked.

"Ran into a couple friends on the way over, and it looks like I'm going to have to stay close for the time being," said Kar'tan, pointing to a blaster scar on the left side of his helmet, highlighting a lucky shot that had disabled his helmet's transmitter. The bead in his ear would work in a pinch, but its range was limited.

"But I got the goods," he finished.

From his pocket, Kar'tan produced a 4x12x20 centimeter green brick. "'Rock Cracker,'" he said, "this should be more than enough to screw up the door."

XXX

As Cairn leapt from his handhold onto the loaded tram, Kar'tan kept a close eye on his rearward sensors. By best guess, the bounty hunters had put down nearly 30 men with the armored vehicle, but there would definitely be more trouble when they returned to the denser pallet field, especially since they had given the pirates time to rally together and take up defensive positions.

Kar'tan maneuvered in front of the slow moving automated tram; despite the handicap on the tank, he could still out-pace his prey, so he took the time to turn around so that the tank's splayed 'pontoons' blocked the carriage's movement to either side. The simple droid brain installed on the lead car brought the vehicle to a steady halt when it determined that there was no way around the unfamiliar bulk in front of it.

Through the miniature viewports in the front of the tank, Kar'tan watched as his partner opened the panel covering the lead car's 'brain' and began working his magic on the droid computer inside. Convincing the automated tram to abandon all previous programming and drive head-first into the corner of the hangar door would be a difficult process.

Several minutes passed, and as much as he wanted to keep checking his comm for range, Kar'tan had no choice but to wait in silence so as not to disturb his partner. He checked the tank's long-range sensors every few seconds, paranoid that a group of thugs might sneak up on the pair of the Mandalorians and force them to separate.

_Still, this should be the last door we need to seal,_ Kar'tan thought hopefully, _The rest of the job is just staying in the tank and causing as much terror as we can._

Cairn gave a thumb's up signal to show that the tram was ready to crash; he pulled a wad of the 'Rock Cracker' from his pocket and primed the small detonator that his partner had given him. Kar'tan had set the ring-adjusted device to 'IMPACT,' so the detonator's on-board accelerometer would force it to explode during the impact of the tram's 'accident.'

Cairn leapt back onto the _Saber_, and as the tank pulled away from the suicide train, Kar'tan interrupted his partner's climb into the gunner's seat.

"You know," he said playfully, "I think its time to demolish a building."

Cairn groaned, "I was hoping you'd forget about that."

XXX

The orders Cairn had programmed into the lead car's droid brain changed the hauler's behavior significantly. For starters, its only concern was now maximum velocity, so like a teenager's first day alone with the family speeder, the tram accelerated so quickly that several of the carefully loaded crates fell off the rear of the last few cars.

But the droid brain no longer cared about its cargo, and as the train covered the two hundred meter distance from where it had been reprogrammed to its intended destination, it lost several more crates off the sides and back of its many trailers. The hauler's acceleration and top speed values were not on par with the high performance speeders that rich civilians bought, but even with its heavy burden, the tram reached a respectable 85 kilometers per hour.

When it was within fifteen meters of the door's edge, an emergency fail-safe kicked in, but the devious Mando had anticipated basic safety concerns. On his way through the droid brain's subsystems, Cairn had made several key wiring adjustments.

Rather than apply full reverse thrust, as the fail-safe was instructed to do, the lead car decoupled from its trailers, and shot off at an even greater velocity than before. Even with twelve meters to go, the tram collided a half second before its cargo could make it to the door, meaning that the shock-sensitive device attached to it detonated before the rest of the cars reached the crashsite.

DDC-41/15, or 'Rock Cracker,' lived up to its namesake. Its powerful shockwave threw what remained of the lead car away into the south hangar, warped the massive door, and pulverized the stone wall that made up the massive door jamb it had crashed into; dust and granulated rock flew into the air from the force of the detonation. When the trailing platforms made it to the site, they collided with the weakened support structure; the first few cars retained enough force to knock out sizable chunks of rock at the bottom, and as more smashed into the door jamb, larger blocks of stone, further from the crashsite, began to fall to the ground, creating a pile that the last few trailers had just enough momentum to mount before tipping over.

The pile of pulverized rock, upended tram cars, and ordinance crates reached 7 meters in height, and with unaltered trams beginning to crowd the area, there would soon be no way for the pirates to get through the door any time soon.

XXX

Cairn leaned out from the right side of the tank with a detonator-primed dollop of DDC in his hand. As the tram station flew by, he plastered the lump onto a support column; he was careful not to inadvertently tear himself off the vehicle. The last thing they needed was for him to get severely injured or end up stuck outside Kar'tan's communications range.

Worrying about the comms seemed like an unnecessary paranoia from both Cairn and his partner, but he didn't question it. Mandalorian philosophy revolved around loyalty to clan; concern and support were part-and-parcel of their training.

The bounty hunter grabbed another green wad from his pocket, slapping one on each column as the passed. In a single run, the entire north wall of the crate processing station had devices rigged to blow simultaneously within five minutes.

"Now that we've broken enough of their toys," Cairn said with a smirk, "Don't you think it's time to return to our hosts?"

"My thoughts exactly," said Kar'tan as the tank turned towards the pallet fields and picked up speed. Cairn hopped back into his place on the gunner's seat and checked the turret's alignment.

As the bounty hunters approached the northwestern corner of the field, the vehicle rotated to face the pallets as it passed, strafing sideways to present its heaviest armor towards the most likely place the pirates would be hiding. Through the light haze caused by the tram's detonation, Cairn's position atop the tank gave him the unimpeded view he needed to effectively search for hostiles.

_Clear..._

_Clear..._

_Cl_- "Kar'tan, I've got movement, 1 o'clock."

Cairn revved up the beam cannon to lay down suppressive fire, but before he could pull the trigger on a possible contact, a flurry of red blaster bolts and molten durasteel erupted from a concealed gun emplacement further along the dividing wall. The Mandalorian barely had time to duck before his position was inundated with fire.

"Hostiles, 9 o'clock!"

Bits of still-warm metal pinged off his helmet and ricocheted over him as the tank turned parallel with the wall to face its attackers. The armor plate in front of his cannon protected Cairn as he climbed back to his feet. Kar'tan opened up on the fairly distant emplacement with the primary guns, and the group that had assaulted them took cover to avoid the torrent of blue fire.

Confident behind his armored turret, Cairn turned back to look at what he had initially spotted. In the distance, he saw several pirates hefting large missile launchers on shoulder mounts. **_Shab,_** he thought. _Looks like they wised up._

"Kar'tan, missile team, 3 o'clock!" He shouted into his comm, loud enough that the volume limiters kicked in. "Evasive maneuvers, NOW!"

Cairn watched as a pair of rockets, one after the other, streaked from the launcher team's position. In the split second that it took to cover the 30 meters to the tank, the bounty hunter's adrenaline infused mind took in every small detail. The angry black missiles streaked forward, and dual white plumes of smoke trailed behind, billowing like clouds on a crisp summer day. In the same moment, several stray blaster shots pinged off the armor in front of him and others threatened to hit the projectiles as they approached. The Mandalorian felt the Saber-class become a wild animal, lurching under him, throwing him forward into the turret controls, and his helmet knocked against the off-white armor plate he'd been hiding behind. Cairn could see the rockets pass as they just missed the tank's cockpit.

However, they couldn't miss the wall just behind it.

The detonation would have killed Cairn had he not been behind the upper turret's dense armor. His helmet protected his ears from the shockwave, but the heat washed over his beskar like an ocean torrent, any longer than the few seconds of exposure to the blast and he would have been cooked alive.

When the first missile impacted, the _Saber_-class was still in the process of lurching backwards, all of its weight pushed to the rear. The pressure wave that emanated from the wall was enough to overload the tank's already limit-bound drive systems, and the rear repulsors quietly died.

The vehicle's now unsupported rear end drove straight into the ground, creating a fulcrum; the second missile's pressure wave and the overclocked front repulsors did the rest.

As Cairn's mind grasped what was happening, he instinctively grabbed an interior handhold and pulled himself as far as he could inside the overturning vehicle. The tank was nearly vertical as his helmet passed beneath the level of the turret controls, and as it finished its skyward arc and crashed to the ground, the impact jarred Cairn enough that he let go, landing back first on the granite floor beneath him.

The tank had settled at an angle on the cockpit and one of its pontoons, so Cairn had plenty of room to crawl out of the downed vehicle. As he got to his feet, he brought his flechette cannon to bear and checked his comm.

"Kar'tan, are you alright?" he asked nervously. There was no telling if his partner had been knocked unconscious from the blast or the following crash.

A cough came over the line, "Yeah. I'm fine; I'm alright," Kar'tan responded, and he continued with a dazed sounding, "That was fun."

Cairn breathed a small sigh of relief, but kept his eyes on the pallet field as he took cover behind the tank's stuck pontoon. The heavy blaster bolt and durasteel flechette spewing group had ceased fire after the missiles had hit, but there was no telling when they would start attacking again.

"Get out here," Cairn said tersely, adrenaline had him on high alert. "We need to find cover before they come looking for us."

"Coming... -Ow!" shouted Kar'tan as a _click_, followed by a hard _clang_ emanated from the tank.

"What?" asked Cairn.

"Nothing," his partner responded, "Just hit my head."

Kar'tan emerged from the toppled vehicle with a new scuff on his reinforced helmet, and the pair of Mandalorians darted for the pallet field before their pirate attackers could come into view.

XXX

This area of the storage yard was much more loosely packed than the group Kar'tan had first navigated through in what felt like a lifetime ago, and as he and Cairn gathered their bearings behind one of the taller pallet stacks, the larger Mandalorian spoke up.

"Well, there goes plan A," he said as he shook his head; his ears were still ringing from the inverted fall out of the _Saber__'s_ crash couch. "Where are the _aruetiise_ now?"

"The missile team was about thirty meters deep from where they hit the wall, looks like they're still there ," Cairn replied from his perch at the top edge of the stack. "The blaster and flechette teams have merged together, and now they're heading for the tank."

He dropped to the ground as quietly as he could and unslung his pilfered FC-1.

"How much do you have left in that cannon?" asked Kar'tan as he checked his E-11-A.

"`Bout half a drum," answered Cairn, "Why?"

Kar'tan silently brought his left gauntlet up to chin level; he made a fist, and the mounted vibroknife popped out of this glove with a sharp *shunk.*

Cairn nodded in understanding, wordlessly ejecting and retracting his own blades.

XXX

The pair of Mandalorians silently approached the missile team. The small contingent of human pirates, eight in total, stood in a sparse formation behind hastily organized pallet stacks as they waited for their fellows with the heavy blasters to return.

Kar'tan waited behind a stack while his partner crept into position on the opposite side of the group. The plan was a synchronized assault on the relaxing pirates; with any luck, the pair of them would be able to take down at least a third of the missile team before anyone else could get a shot off.

An acknowledgement light clicked on inside Kar'tan's helmet; Cairn was ready to strike. They had fallen into an almost routine tactical approach; Kar'tan would crash in and draw attention to himself while Cairn would sneak around behind to wreak the most havoc uninterrupted.

Kar'tan took a deep breath, psyching himself up for the confrontation; the human in front of him was taking a break, not concentrating on anything in particular, but another pirate, this one in roughly the middle of the group, raised a hand to his left ear. He was receiving a call from the main team.

He motioned for the others to come closer, "Hey. Hey! They've checked the vehicle-"

Kar'tan quickly realized that it was now or never for their attack; most of the pirates were in the process of grabbing weapons, but half still had their backs to him.

"Now," he said tersely, angrily, as he shot forward onto the nearest PLX wielder. Kar'tan lead the attack with his left hand, grabbing a shoulder and shoving the target to his knees as he jammed his right gauntlet lance into the man's collar. The Mandalorian held the blade in for a heartbeat, then tore the edge forward as he let go of the victim's shoulder. The man collapsed at Kar'tan's feet; in a few moments, he'd be dead.

The other pirates' faces were studies in shock. Moving quickly, Kar'tan reached left and grabbed the tunic on the nearest man, pulling him in and shielding himself from the others as he brought the still ejected blade up into the man's carotid artery. Blood poured out past his clenched fist in a torrent, soaking his duster's right arm again.

On the opposite side of the congregation, two pirates quietly disappeared from the fray as the remaining four pointed their weapons at Kar'tan; he recognized that the men with the PLX launchers would be the bigger threat. While they wouldn't intentionally fire with their target so close, adrenaline and fear could make them twitchy and stupid.

His second victim was still falling with the pull; the big Mandalorian pivoted and shoved, using the momentum of the falling body to toss the pirate into the nearest PLX jockey on his right.

The missile jockey staggered under the weight of his quickly dying compatriot and fell backwards, potentially knocking him out on the ground, but definitely removing him from the fight for the next several seconds.

Kar'tan rolled his hips back in preparation to follow through to the next target on his left. The pirate was only half turned towards Kar'tan; a hard stab, backed up by the rage in his blood and the momentum of his fist would be enough to down the man, but after dealing with him, there would be an enemy at Kar'tan's back.

There was no stopping to reevaluate. The killing blow came swiftly, cutting into the man's pectoral muscle and sawing through bone to put a fissure in the heart of his target. As the knuckles of Kar'tan's outstretched fist connected with the man's chest, he took another step forward.

The bounty hunter retracted his glove-blade, put his left knee down behind the victim, and grabbed the man's tunic in both hands, putting the soon-to-be-dead pirate between him and the next assailant.

This far in, there was only flow and rage. Kar'tan shifted his stance and lunged for the last target, shoving the semi-conscious meatshield in front of him. The last man's fellows had been incapacitated or killed within seconds, and as the Mandalorian bowled into him, he awkwardly crashed backwards onto a short pallet stack.

As the man lay flat on his back, Cairn's combat knife dove into his juglar. Kar'tan let go of his meatshield and rolled right, coming to his feet over the pirate he'd knocked aside moments before. A fast drop and a stab to the chest finished the job before Kar'tan leapt to his feet again, ready to keep fighting. Cairn was the only figure in sight, cleaning and resheathing his blades as he stood over his last kill. The part of Kar'tan's mind still enthralled in rage and bloodlust said **_Threat: Destroy_**, but he had to stop.

_Control,** control,**_ he thought consciously, clenching and unclenching his fists; the blades in his gloves made their distinct *shunk* sounds several times. _The fight's over, he's on **my** side._

The big Mandalorian took a deep breath as he forced himself to stop, pushing the bloodrage back into the compartment in his head where it belonged.

"Thanks for the assist," he said with forced calmness.

"Hey, _ner vod_," replied Cairn as he started moving towards a tall stack. "You were the entertainment, I was just pickpocketing the crowd."

Kar'tan laughed more naturally as he clapped his partner on the back, and Cairn climbed the stack for another look at where the rest of the pirates would be. His helmet provided him with night vision that the Overseer likely would not have given his "employees," even those working in the dim sections of the hangar.

"There's the tank," he said, calmly analyzing the battlefield, "so where's the... - There they are, south of the vehicle, just about where we took cover after it flipped."

"Any ideas on where they'll go next?" asked Kar'tan.

"Can't tell from here," replied Cairn, "Looks like they're starting a search pattern."

He looked down from his perch, "What's our next move?"

Kar'tan hefted a PLX launcher. "I was thinking: 'explosive conclusion,'" he said as he pulled a brick of DDC from his pocket.

XXX

As the Overseer's patsy for the armory raid, Opus Crane had earned the trust he had so long desired from the gang, and when the tank had been flipped over because of his strategy, he had felt justified in his command. Now he just needed to find the blasted mercenaries so that they could end this nightmare.

The overturned vehicle was empty, that much was certain, but the PLX team had not returned hails and Crane felt himself growing impatient.

"Where are those psychotic bastards?" he demanded rhetorically. The outsiders had spent over half of the afternoon giving the Kuati Underground's forces an absolute runaround; Crane, like the Overseer commanding him, was done with their games.

He needed the assistance of the PLX team. While others might think a crateful of Rocket-Propelled High Explosives would be overkill for two men, Crane had witnessed these two men smash through several levels of carefully crafted conspiracy, kill over a dozen men in hand-to-hand, break out of an interrogation chamber, and wreak unbelievable amounts of havoc in a 30 year old armored vehicle, all in a matter of days.

He was not taking any more chances.

The promoted patsy rallied his troops. "East! We go East! The PLeX Team needs our assistance, and with them, we will finally stop this madness!"

The contingent of underpaid mercs, ragtag thugs, and disgruntled Imperial workers marched forward into the pallet field, ready to face the outsider threat lurking in the dark. Unbeknownst to them, Mandalorians worked best when concealed in shadow.

XXX

The PLX team had strangely disappeared from their assigned location, and Crane cursed the forces besetting his operation for the thousandth time.

"Sir! We found traces of blood all over the emplacement, but nothing else, not even corpses," said a human mercenary from the front of his pack of thugs.

"Well, check for trails, or something!" Crane was beginning to falter. The complete absence of the rocket team was just another mishap in a continuing string of problems with his first command. The Overseer would not be pleased with his failure; Crane was expected to support the attack against the surface with reinforcements, and there was no way he could help if the entire team was stuck down here on a wild bantha chase.

The mercenary gang milled about as the patsy-in-command sat at the base of an exceptionally tall stack in an attempt to recollect his composure and determine the group's next steps when a drop of what felt like warm water fell onto his ear. Irritated, Crane brushed the liquid away only to discover that he had been splashed by bright red blood.

"Guh!" he exclaimed in surprise as the gang members all turned to look where their leader was pointing. Glowsticks aimed up at the top of the stack to reveal every single PLX team member in a bloodsoaked pile.

After a moment of shock, Crane spoke first. "Get them off of there! Check their vitals!" The men under his command leapt onto the stack to rescue their fallen comrades, but as they clumped together, Nero approached from behind.

"Opus! The rockets! They are missing!" the rodian squeaked in his native tongue.

"Not now." Crane said dismissively. "We have to recover our casualties." He had latched onto the ideal of comradery in a vain attempt to regain control of the situation.

Vain, because the gangsters' fates had already been decided. A human thug at the top of the stack pulled aside a corpse to uncover a lump of green paste with a cred-coin sized detonator beeping at him. The device emitted a sharp _click._

The concussive blast from the shaped charge collapsed the casings of several armed PLX missiles, detonating them in a cascade. The resulting fusion ball, which involved six times the amount of reactive materials as the explosion that had flipped the TX-130, evaporated both the stacked corpses and the men climbing towards them. The pressure wave expanded at a lethal velocity to encompass all of the men gathered in the hastily constructed emplacement.

The last thing Crane felt before he died was an overwhelming sense of depression. The Patsy had failed to stop the bounty hunters for the last time.


	11. The Manifest

Overseer Bonari stood in the armory passage, hands clasped at his back as he turned to address his troops. He vehemently wanted to stretch his left shoulder to relieve the knot that had formed there, but it was a weakness he couldn't afford to show. Despite his current standing as a pirate and criminal mastermind, Lieutenant Aveus Bonari looked and acted the part of the Imperial Officer that he had been trained to be. He stood straight, shoulders back, with his head held high; the blonde haired, blue eyed Coruscanti native seemed to have been pulled directly from a recruitment poster.

"There is a disease in our home." he began, "The men that your brothers face in the south hangar are but the symptom of the infection ." His men began to murmur.

"The man commanding the base above us is the true threat. If we are to pull our home out from under the heel of the Empire, Colonel Karjeel and all of his Stormtroopers must be destroyed."

The Overseer paused to let his crowd calm. The narrow corridor seemed to amplify every sound. When the voices quieted, he started again.

"What was once a forgotten relic ignored by the Empire has been rebuilt with our sweat and blood to the glory that it held during the clone wars .

"We have all become far more wealthy than the Empire could ever promise. Not one of you has gone hungry, been without, had to wonder if the price you paid for the job was worth it.

"When this infection has been cleansed the Kuati Underground will become the dominant force on this planet!"

Bonari's voice increased in volume as his contingent of pirates began to applaud and whoop in exhilaration.

"No man will stand in our way from this day forward!"

All seventy of his men shouted, "We are the Kuati Underground!"

The reverberation shook a light patina of dust onto the Overseer's shoulders. His men were convinced that he'd keep them safe, and they were right, insofar as they were useful to him. He casually brushed the dust away as he lead his forces to the hidden door at the end of the passage, his knotted muscles still nagging him.

XXX

Colonel Karjeel waited in silence with the small contingent of Imperial Stormtroopers that he had selected. Behind a makeshift wall of weapons lockers, fifteen men stood at attention in the small armory, while another thirty waited in the corridors outside.

_Come to me, Lieutenant,_ he thought venomously, _Show me what you're made of._

A Stormtrooper Sergeant, visible because of his orange shoulder patch, paced in front of the forward line; periodically, a trooper would straighten as he passed. At the far end of the double column from Karjeel, the Sergeant performed an about face, and the first row of troopers dropped to one knee, bringing their rifles to bear. The second row took aim above their comrades' heads.

The Colonel smiled. The Stormtrooper Corps was every bit as spit and polish as he remembered; the entire event had been performed without a word.

In the pitch black of the dormant armory, they waited. While Karjeel had no doubt that the Mandalorian bounty hunters could drive the occupants of the subterranean network to the surface, there was a hint of uncertainty in the air.

It was his turn to stride in front of the wall of Stormtroopers.

"In times of peace, we trust our allies and honor our commitments. In times of war, we commit to the destruction of our enemies, but there is no greater threat than the enemy that poses as an ally.

"On our doorstep- no, in our very basement dwells a scourge that has been hidden from the Empire's eyes for far too long. They have grown in audacity, but we will not let them grow in strength! The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!"

Karjeel began the Stormtrooper Oath.

"Our armor,"

"Protects the Empire!" his soldiers finished in unison.

" Our weapons" Karjeel bowed his head.

"Fight for the Empire!"

"Our will,"

"Drives the Empire!"

"We are," He growled, raising his gaze to the door.

"The Corps!"

The Colonel's last statement echoed in the cramped armory, and every trooper tensed for battle.

XXX

The door to the armory shifted slightly as Overseer Bonari keyed in the activation code. As he peered past the opening, darkness welcomed his vision.

"Looks clear," he said hopefully. When Bonari left the base to intercept what he correctly assumed was an incursion by the Mandalorian mercenaries, he had turned the armory's ultra-bright glowpanels off. Upon his return, the low light in the secret passage had let his vision adjust to the pitch black that awaited.

He pushed the door wide and was greeted with a single word.

"Fire."

Fifteen blaster bolts streaked towards the door, tearing a swath of destruction through the ranks of pirates gathered in the secret passage. The first salvo of deadly lasers was followed by a second salvo, then a third. Soon, the corridor was filled with a brilliant crimson light as the unknown attackers poured more and more fire into the Overseer's contingent of troops.

In what amounted to only a few moments time, nearly two dozen men were on the ground. Inadvertently covered by the door frame, Bonari stared slack jawed at the wall of fire shooting past him.

Over the commotion of blaster fire and his men being cut to ribbons, the Overseer heard a shout from inside the armory: "Advance!"

His blood ran cold as the volume of blaster fire decreased slightly. Those of his men that hadn't been killed in the initial waves of crimson death had taken cover behind whatever they could find: support pillars, sewage pipes jutting from the walls, even piles of the men that had fallen in front of them. Behind his piece of cover, Bonari was frozen in place; his heart hammered against his ribcage.

Underneath the unending stream of fire, right in front of him, crept a Stormtrooper. The soldier's skull-white mask turned to inspect the hall. First to his left, then right, raising his rifle when he saw Bonari, still frozen in the corner. The trooper shifted towards him as another came through the door, blaster on full auto, mowing down any target he could find.

"Target acquired, sir," came the disembodied voice. The trooper cocked his helmet to the side, then stepped further into the passage to make way for the rest of his squad, blaster still leveled at Bonari, who simply wanted to melt into the wall behind him.

The Kuati Underground was still returning fire. Short bursts of green and blue were visible through the red haze of the Stormtroopers' attacks. Bonari couldn't see much in the now chaotically lit passage, but it was clear that as the troopers advanced, more and more of his pirate band was getting cut down by the well trained and night-vision-equipped adversaries.

The Overseer, still under the gun of the stoic trooper in front of him, waited for what felt like hours before the fighting finally ceased. In the relative silence that followed, two Stormtroopers pinned Bonari's arms behind him and dragged him into the armory.

A familiar voice echoed in the durasteel chamber.

"Lights please."

The armory's glowpanels flicked on like a supernova, and Bonari was forced to shut his eyes against the brightness.

When his vision adjusted, the Overseer looked up at the faces of his captors.

Surrounded by gleaming white Stormtrooper helmets, with a fire in his eyes that filled Bonari with a primal dread, stood Colonel Karjeel in full uniform, looking for all the world like the warrior god of some aboriginal culture.

"Lieutenant Aveus Bonari, you are under arrest for treason against the Empire and mutiny against your superior officer," he spoke in formal tones, as though he were a deity passing down judgement on a mere mortal.

The Colonel drew his service pistol from its holster. It was a dignified motion, one that seemed to have been practiced after years of battlefield leadership. Bonari felt his blood run cold; he knew what was coming. _I'm not going to make it out of this room alive, _he thought_._

Karjeel slowly brought the pistol to Bonari's forehead.

"In thirty five years of service to the Emperor," he began slowly, "I have never met a man who has so whole heartedly betrayed me. You, Lieutenant, now hold that distinct honor."

The Colonel pulled back the charging handle on his blaster pistol; the weapon could now deliver a full-power shot with only a gentle squeeze of the trigger. Bonari closed his eyes; he knew there was no escape now.

"For thirty five years," he continued, "I fought to uphold what the Old Republic, and now the Empire stands for: civilization."

Karjeel lowered his hand, "And I would be spitting on that ideal if I killed you now."

De-cocking his pistol, the Colonel spoke to his Troopers, "Bind his hands, he's coming with us."

Lieutenant Bonari's eyes fluttered open as the Stormtroopers dragged him to his feet. His surprise was overshadowed by a sudden anger. "Fool! I was right to take the base! You are just a weak old man!"

Quick as lightning, Karjeel flipped his pistol around to grab it by the barrel and smacked Bonari's cheek with the grip.

Shocked, the Lieutenant made no moves as the Stormtroopers attached a pair of stun cuffs to his wrists.

"You will stand trial because your death will not prevent any others!" Karjeel shouted, "If you have any respect for the men who died for your cause, then you will hold your traitorous tongue!"

The Colonel waved in dismissal, and the troopers holding Bonari stepped aside to let their commanding officer pass through the hidden door.

XXX

In the empty north hangar, a pair of Mandalorians ran from the gap in the south wall. They passed the burned out control booth and turned north, slowing to a trot as they reached the entrance to the Overseer's office. The smaller of the two pulled a bulky cannon off his back and turned to watch for potential attackers in the pallet field opposite the east wall, while the larger one opened the door and stopped just inside.

Now that his adrenaline had worn off again, Kar'tan was starting to feel the full effects of being smacked around, interrogated, shot, and forced to fight for his life over the pain.

_Come on, _he thought, _just a little further now._

The bounty hunter closed the primitive slide-away door and staggered up the stairwell it concealed. When he reached the office at the top, Kar'tan carefully opened the entryway; despite his exhaustion, the Mandalorian was still wary of potential surprises.

However, his caution proved to be unnecessary; the room, like the rest of the hangar, had been emptied of its occupants, as he had hoped when he relayed his plan to Colonel Karjeel.

The Overseer's desk was covered in information: datacards detailing different shipments, small computers displaying guard rosters, and even stacks of flimsi cataloguing the expenditures of Kuati DriveYards over the previous fiscal year. After ten minutes of collecting several volumes worth of proof that this underground operation was, in fact, the core of the black market, Kar'tan found what he was actually looking for: a real-time manifest of what Bonari kept in his "collection."

The bounty hunter smiled; the salvage rate for this much kit would net nearly ten times as many credits as the Imperial Privateer's Bounty, of which Kar'tan was uncertain would be paid out anyway. Despite the fact that both he and Cairn had dissolved the pirate gang near-single handed, the Mandalorian suspected that the Empire would be unlikely to publicly admit that one of their own had been behind the organization in the first place.

A click emanating from Kar'tan's earpiece interrupted his analysis.

"Kar'tan, if you're finished," said Cairn, "We have guests to entertain."

Because of his damaged transmitter, he couldn't respond to his partner's message, but when Kar'tan looked out the destroyed window, he could see the gleaming white of Stormtrooper armor approaching from the north wall.

_Right on schedule, _he thought. The prospect of facing down a legion of well armed and properly trained Stormtroopers didn't sit well with him, especially if it occurred to Colonel Karjeel, as it had to Kar'tan, that the safest course of action might be to remove any and all witnesses to this gross breach of Imperial Security on Kuat.

Kar'tan crossed the Cetagandan carpet with laden footsteps. Dread began to creep into his heart as he descended the stairs outside the Overseer's Office. Each step might be bringing him closer to his immanent death, and his bruised kidneys weren't helping at all.

As he opened the door and stepped out into the north hangar, the Mandalorian watched a procession of nearly fifty Stormtroopers escort Colonel Karjeel. Marching in formation, the Troopers stepped in time to what Kar'tan now recognized as the Imperial Anthem. The martial rhythm, coupled with heavy brass and rolling percussion, seemed to be emanating from a pair of troopers at the back with large speakers attached to their back plates and shoulder pauldrons.

Kar'tan, now back in range of his partner, spoke quietly inside his helmet, "These Imperials certainly know how to put on a show."

"I didn't even know they_ had_ an Impromptu Parade Division," Cairn replied. They both chuckled quietly; the Empire was obviously very good at propaganda and intimidation.

The troopers came to a halt a few meters from where Cairn was standing, and the music died very quickly. Colonel Karjeel stepped out to meet the pair of Mandalorians in front of the first row of his Stormtrooper platoon. Cairn snapped to attention, and Kar'tan saluted as best he could, tensing up caused a jolt of pain to flash through his stomach.

"Mr. Venn, I would like to thank you and your partner for your assistance with Kuat's 'domestic troubles' this day," Karjeel began. "There is some protocol we have to discuss before I can allow you to leave, however."

"That's fine Colonel, though I'd prefer a stiff drink to take the edge off before we get down to business," quipped Kar'tan.

Karjeel made a motion with his hands, and a pair of Stormtroopers dragged a squirming Overseer Bonari to the front of the procession. The man stopped struggling when he saw the pair of Mandalorians, his face a picture of outrage. Kar'tan saw the Colonel turn to look at his prisoner, eyes cold as carbonite, and the Lieutenant cowed under the man's terrifying gaze.

Kar'tan was impressed by the Officer's ferocity; it was apparent that he had not only managed to read Karjeel correctly, but he had also helped the old soldier find his inner fire again. It was what had enabled him to take his base back by force. In that moment, the bounty hunter felt a sort of kinship with the Colonel; the man was clearly fulfilling his purpose in the galaxy again.

Cairn broke the short silence, "The Lieutenant is in Imperial custody then, I guess that's it."

Kar'tan snapped out of his internal reverie. "Yes, that reminds me," he said as he retrieved some of the documentation he'd collected in the Overseer's office.

"Here is a record of goods smuggled in past the Imperial Fleet in the past five months," he said as he handed over a datacard; Karjeel scowled.

"-Smuggled out past the Imperial Fleet," another datacard and his scowl deepened

"-Sold to Nurga the Hutt," a sheet of flimsi.

"-Bought from Nurga the Hutt," a datadisk.

"Et cetera, et cetera, the list goes on from here," he finished, and the Colonel did not look pleased. This betrayal had clearly bothered him more deeply than Kar'tan had suspected. "and what I have is easily only a quarter of the evidence Mr. Bonari has stored in his office."

Karjeel looked down at what remained in the Mandalorian's hands. Among the other items he had collected, the Mandalorian was holding a large datapad. _Here we go,_ Kar'tan thought as he watched the Colonel's eyes, _let's broach this subject carefully._

"_This_ datapad, on the other hand," Kar'tan said slowly, "is a record of, well, all this." He gestured to his left at the stacks of old duraplast crates.

Karjeel nodded.

"And according to what I have here," Kar'tan paused, "most of this equipment dates back to the Clone Wars, and belongs to the defunct Republic and Confederacy."

"If the age of the labels is anything to go by," said Karjeel with a slight smile.

"Exactly," said Kar'tan, "and with the exception of Mr. Aveus Bonari, there is currently no one to claim any of it."

"You mean salvage," said the Colonel, understanding where the Mandalorian was going.

"Yes," said Kar'tan, "Mr. Bonari no longer counts himself as a member of the Imperial forces, and my partner and I were earliest on the scene..."

Karjeel stared at Kar'tan as if trying to scrutinize the Mando's intent through his implacable visor.

"Mr. Venn, are you implying that the pair of you have Salvage Rights to the property in this facility because you were here first?"

"Well, to be specific," said Kar'tan as he assumed a nonchalant composure, "My partner and I were clearing out 'certain anarchist parties' from the facility while its original owner and his primary associates were being apprehended by the Empire for fraud and treason."

The Colonel shifted his glance between the two Mandalorians.

"Ergo, by your interpretation, the incident with Mr. Crane and Lieutenant Bonari is an internal affair, and you are willing to trade your contract fees in exchange for the rights to what they left behind?"

Kar'tan clasped his hands together in approval. "Yes," he said, pointing his joined hands at Karjeel as he spoke, "You get the credit for taking down a pirate operation, and we get our cut of the loot."

Colonel Karjeel let out a sharp sigh that could almost have been construed as a laugh. "Mr. Venn, you impress me," he said. "You stand in the face of overwhelming odds as though nothing will stop you."

"So, we can keep the salvage?" asked Kar'tan a bit nervously.

"By all means," said Karjeel, "If only through your audacity to challenge the Empire, you've earned it."

XXX

The Mandalorians spent another day on Kuat tying up loose ends in their investigation.

Stormtroopers were able to thoroughly search the Overseer's office, and when all was said and done, the evidence against the Lieutenant was enough to get him sent straight to Kessel.

The battered TX-130 that had served as the Mandalorians' war horse was righted and returned to its original place to await donation to the Imperial History Museum.

Imperial accountants spent the larger part of the day assessing the quality of the materials present in both of the hangars; it turned out that much of the goods would have upset the balance of power between the Empire and the Rebellion had it been placed in the hands of more anarchist parties.

After every blaster, launcher, and stray grenade had been accounted for, and the pair of bounty hunters had filled out several volumes worth of paperwork covering both their contract and the Salvage Rights, Kar'tan and Cairn found themselves once again in The Administrator's office. The pair took their seats across from Karjeel, and, nearly in unison, the Mandalorians removed their helmets for what would be their final sendoff. The Colonel gave a wry smile before gathering several sheets of flimsi from his desk. "The contents of what we can now call 'Dismantled KDY Research and Development Facility TRD-115,'" he began, "have been preliminarily assessed for your claim for a Finder's Fee, under Imperial Edict S-82, of 10%."

Kar'tan did his best not to look over eager as Karjeel handed the sheets of flimsi over to Cairn. By his original estimation, 10% of the overall value of the "historical" goods stored under them was roughly 18 million credits, rounding down. For the pair of bounty hunters, this would be an unprecedented windfall; this amount of money would normally need to be saved over a lifetime.

Bounty Collections was not as glamorous a profession as the average citizen believed; well paying customers would _sometimes_ part with an obscenely large number of credits, but jobs were fairly scarce with so much competition in the galaxy, and if the target was found by someone else or not at all, all of that effort would be for nothing.

The bounty hunters had lost a few targets over the years, mostly due to Kar'tan's arrogance forcing them into a corner, but they considered themselves lucky; they were Mandalorian, hunting was only one of their skills, and straight mercenary work was always an option when things got tough.

The black armored Mando looked up from the handful of flimsi, and Kar'tan could see the scrutiny in his dark grey eyes.

"Colonel," Cairn began, "have your accountants looked at the figures on this documentation?"

"Yes," Karjeel replied. "They approved of it just over an hour ago."

"I see," said Cairn, "because this particular agreement states that under Edict S-82, we are allotted 29 million, 533 thousand, and one hundred fifteen Imperial credits for our efforts in "recapturing priceless antiques from the ownership of 'certain anarchist elements.'"

Kar'tan did his best not to gape at the absurd value of their salvage fee. Regardless, a blistering tension filled the room as they waited for Colonel Karjeel to respond.

"Yes, that is the amount that they approved," Karjeel said after a long pause. The man's piercing blue eyes tightened at the admission, and the pair of Mandalorians shared a quick glance.

Kar'tan spoke up, "I take it that the accountants in charge of this... financial investigation did not allot anything for you or your men?"

The Colonel said nothing, but his eyes tightened further at the mention of Imperial Accounting.

"Right then, time for a history lesson," continued Kar'tan. "Mandalorians have a... tradition, of sorts. Long before the Empire, before Mandalore the Preserver brought the majority of us back to _Manda'yaim_, when we were nomads broken by war and scattered over a hundred worlds, our code was the only thing that kept our clans together. It kept us from pitting brother against brother, as it were, and when a _Mando'ad_ joined his fellows around the campfire, he was entitled to his share of the goods because he performed his share of the work, 'for the good of the clan.'"

Karjeel glanced between the two bounty hunters, obviously wondering where Kar'tan was going with his monologue.

"Today was no different." said Kar'tan. " When we were stuck down there, fighting for our lives, you and your men were fighting to cover our backs; if not for your "clan's" sacrifice, we would not be sitting here, discussing salvage rights."

The Mandalorian glanced at his partner for approval and received a sharp nod; he gestured to Cairn, who pulled a small datapad from his belt. "As commander of this establishment, you, Colonel Horatio Karjeel, are formally recognized under Mandalorian law as Kuat's "clan leader" by Kar'tan Venn and Cairn Tracyn, and allotted 1/3 of revenues gained for you participation in this operation. You may distribute the acquired revenues to your subordinates as you deem fit."

At that moment, the Colonel lost nearly all of his composure. "10 million?" he asked, incredulous.

Kar'tan nodded, "Under Mandalorian custom, you are entitled to your share."

Karjeel continued looking stunned as Cairn piped up, "And Imperial Law recognizes territorial rules and bylaws valid under the "Regional Separation Clause" detailed during the dissolution of the Imperial Senate."

After the affirmation, there were no words; the three of them signed the presented paperwork and its amendments, and the pair of Bounty Hunters stood up to leave the room before Karjeel stopped them.

Having regained his ability to speak, the Colonel pronounced his words in a soft tone that was similar, but altogether different from the voice he had greeted them with nearly a week before. "Gentlemen, there is no amount of gratitude I can convey with mere words, and since I have been relegated to occupying only this establishment for the foreseeable future, this is my contact information." He held out a small datacard. "I have associates in Imperial Intelligence. If there is any information I can provide you for future endeavors, it will be the least I can_ reliably_ do."

Kar'tan retrieved the outstretched datacard and slipped it into one of his pockets. "Thank you sir, we will keep in touch."

The pair of Mandalorians saluted, and they left Colonel Horatio Karjeel of the 555th Imperial Stormtrooper Regiment to contemplate his new-found wealth.

XXX

The walk through Port 17's markets on the way to the berth where the ARC was stored was filled with a silence that could only be described as contemplative.

Without a single word exchanged, both bounty hunters prepped the ARC for launch; Cairn signed the relevant paperwork while Kar'tan checked the lubricant levels in both of the side-mounted engines.

When the pair of them climbed into their crash couches and the hatches slammed home, Cairn could no longer hold his tongue.

"Kuat's 'Clan Leader'?" he said quizzically as he adjusted the tail cannon controls.

"Sounded official," came Kar'tan's terse response from the front of the craft. It was his turn to fly, and Cairn could see flight plans being uploaded on his readout of the ship's navicomputer.

"Yeah?" said Cairn, knowing what would come next.

"I think Karjeel would have made a good Mandalorian, and more importantly, he deserved a share of what he helped fight for." Cairn heard him take a deep breath as the ARC lifted off the ground, "Besides, do you think the accountants, or even his sense of duty, would have let him take the money if we had just given it to him with no pretenses?"

Cairn thought for a moment as he watched Kuat fall away.

"I doubt it."

The snubfighter approached the KDY shipyard ring. "_My father _taught me that to contribute to the clan's welfare is to contribute to your own, and the way I see it, there's no reason that our allies aren't worthy of our clan's goodwill."

"I'm not arguing, _ner vod,_" placated Cairn, "I just think you're a big softy."

On the other end of the line, Kar'tan chuckled. "Maybe I'm just too nice for bounty hunting," he said facetiously.

Cairn sighed. "_I_ still enjoy it."

"Fair enough," said Kar'tan, "But the galaxy's different for us now."

Cairn thought for a moment as the shipyards passed them by. "Seems the same to me."

"In a way," responded Kar'tan, "but now we're free to travel across the galaxy to find criminals, fight gangsters, pirates, or worse, and maybe do some work for the Protectors. We're able to do it now because we_ want to,_ not because we _have to._"

"Let's do it then," said Cairn as the ARC dropped into hyperspace, taking the Mandalorian Bounty Hunters away from Kuat and onto their next journey.

* * *

><p>Well, that's the end for now.<p>

Tell me what you think! I'm looking forward to criticisms on style, prose, and character building more than those on "official content," as some of the elements I've mentioned are explicitly non-canon, but I wanted to include them to develop character attitudes.

Beyond that, I'm sure others will have suggestions and critiques on plot, and I'll appreciate pointers, though I'd like to reiterate that this is my first attempt at writing, so please be... not assholes about it.

Thanks for making it this far!

-Ken White


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